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Mr. Minslie’^ 


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BY • , > ■ ■ 

F. C. PHILIPS. j \ 

Author of “As in a LooKiNij' G lass, Etc., Etc. : . v 


L(OYell & do., 

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YOMG MR. AINSLIE’S COURTSHIP. 




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Young Mr. Ainslie’s 


COURTSHIP 


f/ 


BY 


PHILIPS 




Author of “As In A Looking Glass,” “The Dean and His Daughter,” 
Etc., Etc. 



NEW YORK 

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YOUNG MR AINSLIE’S COURTSHIP. 


CHAPTER I. 



MAN with a natural taste for litigation 


as a rule, greatly to be pitied, and still 
more is he deserving of our sympathy when in 
addition he is afflicted with an insane desire to 
plead his own cause in person. No doubt a railway 
manager, thoroughly conversant with his work and 
with all the details of his own line, and of long 
experience in Parliamentary Committees, and accus- 
tomed also to address meetings of shareholders, 
would be very well able to figure as a Parlia- 
mentary counsel. This, however, is an exceptional 
case. And we are as far off from the ideal state ot 
things in which every man is to be his own lawyer, 
as from that in which every man will be his own 
architect, engineer, stock-broker, banker, surgeon, 
and physician* Lawyers and doctors know better 


1 


2 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


than this. They almost invariably take advice 
even upon small occasions. They are quite aware 
that a man is very seldom indeed a competent 
judge of his own case. But there are many such 
people to be found in the world as the man to 
whom I have referred, and amongst the number 
was Colonel George Ainslie. 

This warrior, after giving up the command of that 
famous old regiment, the 25th (the Prince of Wales’ 
Own) Lancers, retired to his country place in Surrey, 
and with the exception of marrying a charming 
and accomplished wife, and begetting a promising 
son, occupied himself in no other way than in 
quarrelling with his neighbours and his friends and 
his tradespeople, and, indeed, with nearly every one 
with whom he was brought in contact. These 
quarrels generally found their solution in the courts 
of law, and as the Colonel was for the most part 
in the wrong, and even when he happened to be 
in the right managed to spoil a good cause by 
insisting upon conducting it himself, his success as 
a litigant was not altogether brilliant. Indeed, 
fifteen years of indulgence in this expensive amuse- 
ment reduced his fortune, which had been a ver' 
ample one, to what is called a modest competence. 
Want of success, however, did not diminish the 
Colonel’s ardour, nor quench his desire to exhibit 
his prowess in the law courts, and there is little 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 


3 


doubt that if a chill, caught (as he said) out hunting, 
or, as Mrs. Ainslie affirmed, in the corridors of the 
Royal Courts of Justice (and this interesting 
problem was never satisfactorily solved), had not 
providentially carried him off, he and his wife and 
child would before long have been reduced to posi- 
tive beggary. Mrs. Ainslie was perilously approach- 
ing her fortieth year at the time of the Colonel’s 
death, while their only child, Philip, with whose 
fortunes this veracious history will for the most 
part deal, was just fourteen ; and it was seven years 
from the date of that not altogether to be regretted 
event when the story opens. 

Colonel Ainslie had been usually described by 
the garrison hacks, and the ladies’-maids, and the 
nurse-maids in the various towns where he had 
been quartered during his period of military ser- 
vice, as a magnificent man, and in this description 
there was scarcely a tinge of exaggeration. In this 
respect, and in this respect only, did Philip resemble 
his father. He was of fine stature and build, being 
considerably over six feet, and his chest and 
limbs were those of a giant, and, the physiognomy 
excepted, he reminded you of some of those quaint 
statuettes and rice-paper paintings, now every- 
where to be seen, of Burmese wrestlers. Indeed, 
this peculiarity was very maiked, and it is on 
record that during his sixteenth year, when a great 


4 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 


lout twice his weight insulted him by calling him 
a “Daddy Longlegs,” he took the offender by his 
collar and the slack of his nether garments, and 
threw him into a quickset hedge, from which the 
unhappy young man emerged considerably dilapi- 
dated and with much loss of personal dignity, 
having to hold his garments together with both 
hands as he wended his way home a sadder and a 
wiser person. 

As years grew upon him, Master Philip’s physical 
strength did not develop itself at all in the direction 
of *the modern craze, now happily past its prime, 
of athleticism. He knew what he could do, and he 
was content with it; and at Cambridge he rowed 
in his college eight, and was persuaded to occupy 
a thwart in the University boat, very much, how- 
ever, against his inclination. But he entirely 
declined to go about pot-hunting at athletic sports 
and regattas, and took his exercise by himself or 
with his companions, having a distinct preference 
for the prosaic and useful side of athletics. He 
was only an ordinary runner, but he could walk 
any number of hours a day; he could keep up 
swimming till his limbs were numbed ; he could 
lift and carry great weights with comparative 
ease; his boxing and wrestling almost reached pro- 
fessional rank ; and — a fact which students of 
character will appreciate — he was a first-rate climber 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


5 


of trees, and would spend hours together among 
their branches, sometimes with a pipe or a book, 
or both, and very often without any other source 
of occupation than his own thoughts. 

So Philip grew up until it became necessary to 
think what was to be done with him. He had not 
been sent to a public school. Now, this was, of 
course, in many ways a great disadvantage to the 
lad. On the other hand, his character retained its 
originality. For the English public-school boy is 
now as stereotyped as is the English public-school 
boy^s Sunday dress of sober trousers, black waist- 
coat and jacket, or tail coat, according to age and 
size, with shirt collar to match, silver watch and 
chain, and tall silk hat. Philip was a child of 
nature. 

He left the University with what is termed the 
highest credit. He had by no means covered him- 
self with academical honours, and bets were freely 
laid that he would not take his degree at the 
first opportunity. The layers were disappointed, 
for he took his degree without any trouble, if 
without any great distinction, the first time he had 
the chance to offer himself for examination, and 
was of the standing to do so. He left Cambridge 
without a shilling of University debts, with a 
considerable number of friendships more or less close, 
and leaving behind him a general and well-deserved 


6 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


impression that he was a thoroughly good fellow, 
or, as they call it at Cambridge, & good man all 
round.” 

Then came life, for the University is only the 
finishing school, except for those who mean to be^ 
come pedagogues themselves, or to devote their 
whole lives to study, and even these latter generally 
go abroad, where the libraries and museums at their 
disposal are better than those of twenty Oxfords 
and Cambridges rolled into one. And now the 
question arose, what was Philip to do? Tutors 
have stereotyped answers worthy only of a guide 
book. Ask them what your son is to do now that 
he has taken his degree. They begin with the 
Bar, profoundly pointing out that it is the quickest 
road to the peerage of any, except perhaps the 
Army, but that it requires immense industry and 
self-denial. In the same vein — like the Fool of 
Jacques who took a dial from his poke, and, gazing 
at it with lack-lustre eye, quoth very wisely, It 
is ten o’clock,” going on to observe that an hour 
ago it was nine, and that in another hour it would 
be eleven — they discourse on the relative advan- 
tages of civil engineering, of taking a mastership 
in a school, of taking Orders and becoming a 
curate, and so forth. 

It is astonishing with how little wisdom advice, 
apparently the most solemn, is often given. Tlie 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


7 


wisdom of Polonius had no effect upon Philip, 
and next to none upon his mother. 

“ You had better be, my dear,” said that most 
sensible lady, ‘‘just whatever you think the best, 
for you can afford to be anything in reason. I 
would rather not see you in business; nor do I 
want you to become at once a small country squire, 
a nobody among the Lord-lieutenant and his 
companions, and only just able to keep your couple 
of hunters; but if I do not want to see you in 
business, I certainly do not want to see you idle. 
Choose a profession, and make sure you choose one 
you like. I only hope it will not be the Army, or 
indeed any that will separate us during the rest 
of my life.” 

“All right, mother,” said Philip, “I will think 
it over.” And giving her a kiss on each cheek, 
he took down his hat and stick from their place in 
the hall, whistled to his spaniels, and strolled out 
into the village. 

The little country house in which mother and son 
lived was nine miles from Fairminster, and in that 
direction Philip marched along with great strides, 
for he was a capital walker, and could easily do 
his five-and-a-half miles an hour. 

Now Fairminster is one of the most curious old 
towns in Surrey. The houses are red -tiled and 
quaintly gabled. Little streams of .water unex- 


8 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


pectedly make their appearance in the street, pursue 
a noisy rattling course for several yards, and then 
suddenly disappear again under the ground. There 
is a local trade in saddlery which is considerable. 
There are one or two old coaching inns, and there 
are several of the most marked features of a 
county market-town more strongly accentuated than 
usual. 

Arriving at Fairminster about half-past one, 
Philip felt hungry. “ No good worrying your mind 
on an empty stomach,” he said to himself, as he 
sat down to cold ribs of beef, hot potatoes, and 
sound draught Burton ale. Then being soon 
satisfied that he should not have to think upon the 
dreaded empty stomach, he lit his briar, and 
sauntered out of the hotel into the pleasantly wooded 
environs of the town. His spaniels followed 
happily at his heels, but beyond their occasional 
interchange of barks there was nothing to break 
the stillness of the air except the drowsy hum of 
insects or the occasional note of a wild bird. 

On he went till he came to some felled and 
lopped trees lying in a vacant space by the road- 
side, and on one of these he sat, wondering whether 
sitting on a fallen tree might rot somehow give 
him inspiration much in the same way that sitting 
on a three-legged stool with no seat to it over a 
vaporous hole in the ground inspired the priestess 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 


9 


at Delphi, and he laughed at the quaintness of the 
idea. 

There are certain lengths of distance in the Dutch 
canal where the bargemen calculate the ground 
they have covered, or have got to cover, by the 
number of pipes that can be smoked in its transit, 
saying, for instance, “ It is four pipes to Utder- 
dam, and from there it will be six pipes to Zuy- 
precken; so we can get to Zuyprecken in good 
time for supper, and at Zuyprecken the schnapps 
is good.’' 

In a frame of mind as philosophical as this 
Philip at last rose from his tree. “ Five briars 
this size,” said he looking fondly at his favourite 
pipe, ought to be time enough to any man with 
nerve to decide, even were it to be between peace 
and war. Thank Heaven I never had any difficulty 
from the first ; but it is always pleasant, if you can, 
to come to the ultimate conclusion that jmu have 
been right all along. Now I must walk back, and 
after dinner I will tell my mother what result I 
have arrived at. Never talk business before dinner, 
or at any rate immediately before it. I know it 
puts you off your feed, and I have been told on 
credible authority that it injures your digestion. 
So, too, do gin and bitters, but — here we are,” and 
he strolled through the open portals of “ The 
Chequers,” and ordered a wine-glass full of that 


10 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


invigorating giver of appetite for which it can, at 
any rate, be claimed that it is not, like absinthe, 
a distinct poison, judging by the results the latter 
produces if taken with sufficient devotion and 
perseverance. 

After a kindly word to the landlady and the 
barmaid, Philip left the inn and commenced strid- 
ing home with his immense long swinging, almost 
slouching step, through the streets where every- 
body knew him by sight, and where none had a 
bad word for him, and along the country lanes, 
reaching after eleven miles, accomplished, to be 
exact, in two hours and thirteen minutes, the long 
shadow thrown by his mother’s house across the road. 

Mrs. Ainslie was standing at the gate, — not wait- 
ing for her son, but out of habit, — and she waved 
her handkerchief to him as he came up towards her 
with the spaniels at his heels. 

“ We’ll have dinner, mother,” he said, “ and then 
I will tell you the conclusions I have arrived at, 
and submit them to your approval.” 

His mother smiled, and he presently descended 
from his chamber radiant in fresh linen, and redo- 
lent of that most homely of cosmetics, brown 
Windsor soap. 


CHAPTER II. 



FTER a meal, in which his own share would 


have done credit to Gargantua, Philip, in 
the plainest possible fashion, without hinting or 
suggesting, but laying down proposition after pro- 
position as simply and yet completely as if he were 
demonstrating some problem in Euclid, with its 
“ therefores ” following each other like the links of 
a chain, gave his mother the whole of his mind. 

Now it may be as w'ell to say at once what 
it was that Philip had determined to do, and how 
he had abandoned his intention when he saw what 
pain it would be likely to cause his mother. 

He had become, even so early in life, tired of the 
same trees, the same meadows, every square foot of 
which he could have mapped out, the same brook 
with its trout, and the same town with the same 
market-place, the same farmers round about the 
doors of “The Lion,” and “The Chequers,” and 
“The Dragon,” and “The Golden Heart,” of the 
saddlers, of the old dealer in corn and seed, and 
of the veterinary surgeon, the same little knots of 


12 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 


townsfolk discussing as usual whether it would 
rain to-morrow, whether turnips would be an/ 
more than an average crop, whether there would 
be a good show of cubs at which to enter the 
young hounds, and whether it was true that Sir 
Jacob, the member for the Eastern Division, was 
so drunk the other night in the House of Commons 
that he actually awoke to the fact himself and 
abruptly concluded a rambling incoherent soliloquy 
with the emphatic remark, “Those are my sentiments, 
Mr. Speaker; they have been my sentiments from 
a boy. There is no element of party feeling in 
them ; and by adherence to them England will 
once again become the England of Pitt and of 
Burleigh, of Fox, Newcastle, and North.” 

The dream of Philip’s life had been to travel 
from the East to the Western Ind. He knew, of 
course, that exploring was hopelessly beyond his 
reach. He was quite aware that you must be a 
very rich man indeed to equip yourself with 
waggons and bullocks, and make an attempt to see 
what there is six or seven hundred miles beyond 
the farthest known point on the Congo. 

All this, as I have said, Philip clearly and fully 
explained to his mother. Mrs. Aid she was less 
astonished than he thought, but it may be men- 
tioned that she happened to be a very shrewd 
lady indeed. She could, to use a homely proverb, 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 13 


see as far into a brick wall as can most people. 
And if your vision is equal to even an attempt 
upon a brick wall, you may satisfy yourself that 
you are quite as intelligent as your neighbours 
and probably even more so. So‘ the estimable 
lady listened to her son with all the judicial 
solemnity of a Burleigh, and finally put a very 
terrible question. 

How long,” she asked, “ has all this nonsense 
been fermenting in your head ? ” 

“I am not at all sure that it is nonsense, dear 
mother. But it has been fermenting, as you call 
it, for some time. Indeed, it ought to have been 
bunged down and in the cellar a long time ago. 
That, however, is my loss and my laziness; and 
I can now only tell you that you know everything 
that I have to say.” 

Then you had better also know, my dear, that 
what you have to say has made your mother very 
unhappy and unquiet. She had always looked 
forward to your being, and she knows you would 
be if you were at home, a comfort and support to 
her in her old age. But she sees it all now, and is 
sorry if she has been selfish. You shall do as you 
please, my son, and it will perhaps, after all, make 
me the happier for you to do so.” And Mrs. 
Ainslie got up out of her arm-chair, her state dress 
(always donned on important family occasions) 


14 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 


rustling like a copse in autumn, and came towards 
him. Philip had his arms round her before she had 
advanced three yards. 

“ All right, dearest mother, I shall never oppose 
your wishes. You may consider everything settled 
as you desire. And you may be sure I should 
never have acted against your views in the slightest 
degree. I owe you, and you only, everything in 
this world; and now you must have your tea, for 
look, it is past bedtime, and when you are off up- 
stairs I will just have a smoke in the library, and 
to-morrow morning we will meet as usual at break- 
fast and settle matters without any argument. That 
will be easy enough, as we are quite agreed upon 
them. I will be up early, and I shall come to you 
fresh from the mill tail. And, unless the sunset 
misled me to-night, which I don’t think it did, 
there will be my trout to-morrow for breakfast, 
as weU as your ham and eggs. Some people say 
trout are the better for keeping a day or two. 
What a pleasant world it would be if there were 
not so many fools in it ! ” 

And so mother and son parted; the former 
going off to her room, and the latter, who was 
no better than most young men of his age, to the 
library, where the Annual Register, the Encyclo- 
psedia Britannica, and some antiquated volumes of 
a similar description, some old novels, such as 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


15 


Thaddeus of Warsaw, Shakespeare, a Bible, a his- 
tory of the County published by subscription, in 
five volumes, with steel plates ; Blair’s Sermons, Miss 
Plumptre’s Letters, and Holy Living and Dying, 
formed, with Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar 
Tongue and the poem 3 of Mr. Montgomery, as 
complete a collection of the English classics as any 
country gentleman with means — even the High 
Sheriff himself — might desire ; unless the works of 
Nimrod, the illustrious Colonel Hawker, and with 
them the Mr. Jorrock’s series, are to be considered 
absolutely necessary in a properly appointed library. 
Old Colonel Ainslie, indeed, had enjoyed the repu- 
tation in the county of being a bit of a bookworm. 

In the library Philip brewed himself a great 
tumbler of punch, which, when concocted, con- 
tained amongst other ingredients lump sugar, hot 
water, slices of lemon, spices, and whisky. Then 
he virtuously locked up the whisky in a cupboard, 
the key of which he hung ostentatiously on a nail, 
as if to communicate to all whom it might concern 
that it — the key — had done its day’s work, and had 
now turned in for the night. Then he sat and 
smoked, slowly, and with Batavian deliberation and 
silence. 

“ I am sure I have done the right thing,” said he, 
rising from his chair and shaking himself. “Any- 
how, I have done, and I mean to do, what I 


i6 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^ S C0UR2SHIP, 


think is right, and more than that I cannot do. 
So here goes for Bedfordshire.” 

Philip’s mind was now fully made up. Truth to 
tell, he loved his mother far better probably than 
most men love their wives. He understood her 
slightest wishes almost before she could express 
them herself; and he had accustomed himself to 
hang round about her and look after her in a 
rough, gruff kind of way, as an elephant in India, 
if put to the test, will look after a child, taking 
it up when it gets too near a puddle, and solemnly 
depositing it in the centre of a patch of dry turf 
sheltered by the shadow of a tree, to which it will 
patiently restore its charge from time to time as 
it. strays. The sagacity of an elephant in this 
respect is far superior to that of the ordinary 
haymakers dog. 

Philip had consequently decided with himself to 
remain at home until his mother might die, for 
however long that might be. Of course he could 
not tell her this in so many words ; but an Ameri- 
can, viewing the matter as did Philip, and wishing 
to put it “ plump and flat,” would have said he was 
a good son, above the average of them ; that 
he was champing his teeth to get away, but that 
it was quite clear he’d hung up his prospecting 
boots till the time should come for the old lady to 
croak; and then he’d see the matter through all 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 17 


right and square down to the full stop on the 
headstone and the pensioning off of the family cat, 
realise the little estate in dollars, and be off on the 
rampage — not a spree, but a rampage — such as a 
gentleman might be proud of, from its beginning to 
its end, and write a book about it when it was 
over, if he chose to do so, with pictures of big 
game and all that kiud of shop.” 

I do not believe Philip had an enemy, and I am 
sure that he had many friends. Had it been whis- 
pered — ^if the bucolic mouth can whisper — at the 
farmers- ordinary on market day, that Master Philip 
was going to let the house and the shooting and 
go abroad for a bit, the matter would have created 
far more commotion in the village than would in 
London an assurance that the young princes were 
going with Nares to shoot white bear and musk 
ox at Smith’s Sound, spend a week or two in Nova 
Zembla, and explore the natural history of XJpernavik. 

After all,” said Philip to himself, when he 
was undressing that evening, leaning on the sill of 
his bedroom window and watching the bats flit about 
with their sharp querulous chirrup, listening to the 
hoot of an owl in an old tree hard by that was said 
to be older than the Parish Church, and also looking 
out for an antiquated goat-sucker that used now 
and then to show himself, “After all, I am very 
happy here with my mother; and it would be a 


i8 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 


burning shame to go away if she wishes me to 
stop. The shooting is good, the fishing is fair, and, 
if I wanted a couple of months for grouse, or red 
deer, or salmon, she wouldn’t lift her little finger 
in protest. It’s the idea of the distance and of my 
being among black men, and in a place where 
warming-pans and mustard poultices, and cough 
lozenges, and foot-baths, and other such things 
necessary to salvation are wholly unknown, that 
puts her off her head. If I were to tell her now 
that I wanted to go to the Pyrenees for bear, or 
to Sicily for sword fish, or even to Disco for 
sealing, she wouldn’t mind a bit, because they 
happen to be all in Europe, and yet the journey 
I should have liked to make is little longer, if 
at all, and I should have been able to write home 
much more regularly. However, there is no help 
for it; there it is” (he knocked the ashes out of 
his pipe) ; “ out you go, old briar, and in your 
master turns.” 

And he had not turned in five minutes before 
a measured tranquil snore announced that a healthy 
body, which contained a healthy mind, had gone 
to sleep soundly in company, and that neither of 
the two wished for the present to be vexed by the 
incidents of daily life. 


CHAPTER III. 


T was now approaching the English country- 



gentleman’s time of glory, Christmas. The haies 
were strong on their legs, and almost as swift as 
full-sized saplings. Feathers were never more abun- 
dant or better stuffed. You could hardly walk a 
hundred yards from the hall door without hearing 
the chuckle of an old cock pheasant. It threatened, 
too, to be a cold winter, and Philip foresaw plenty 
of his own particular enjoyment, snap shooting, to 
which you go out alone, except for a knowing old 
dog who likes this rough work, and return with a 
mixed bag — curlew, snipe, plover, even occasionally 
eight or ten big fieldfare — which are delicious in a 
pudding — to say nothing of a cock, if one should 
come spiring over your head against the wind, or a 
brace of duck marked down in that little pond at 
the corner of the spinney. 

There is a fascination of its own about snap-shot 
shooting, which no man can explain, and many a 
good old shikarree of the type of Probyn or St. 
Croix will tell you, that, next to flooring the tiger 


20 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 


with a straight bullet in the hollow of the chest, 
or between the eyes, there is no enjoyment like 
that of roaming about on your elephant, picking up 
snipe in the paddy and indigo fields. 

Philip, with the spaniels, took a walk round what, 
when he was in a cynical temperament, he used to 
call *‘the estate.” His mind was made up, but the 
piU was not the less a bitter one. “After all,” said 
he, “ we aU of us have our troubles, and what 
does this trouble of mine amount to ? Why, 
nothing at all — nothing at all. Its childish to 
howl, like a schoolboy when the thaw comes and 
puts a stop to his sliding, or a girl who wants, 
for reasons of her own, to go to Brighton when 
the family edict has gone forth for Eastbourne. I 
have had precious little of the rough in this life; in 
fact — ” and he strongly emphasized this remark — 
“I think I have had a great deal too much of my 

own way in this world and got spoilt. It’s a jolly 

place this.” He sat down on a stile. “Let me 
see. It’s only pleasure deferred. What’s that to a 
man who has as much pleasure as he wants already ? 
I must look forward a bit for my big game, my 

tuskers, and my tigers with a toenail that would 

rip up a dray horse, and I must possess my soul 
in peace. If ever a man’s duty was clear, it’s mine 
to-day. Right you are ! Stir yourselves up, you 
lazy beasts, and let me see you quarter that field ! ” 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


21 


And he watched while his dogs quartered an acre 
or two of turnips in a manner that seemed to meet 
with his full approval. ** They are getting shy, and 
are beginning to scatter already,” he said, critically; 
and so he strolled home. His mother was at the 
door and welcomed him. 

“What do you want for dinner to-day, dear?” 

“ Whatever you have got, mother.” 

“We have only cold, and I wanted to get you 
something nice after your long walk.” 

“ Did you, mother ? ” puzzling his brains to think 
what were the resources of the house. “Now, after 
a long walk, a man at my time of life ought to 
have learnt to be content with what he can get.” 

Philip was not a bad judge. Cold silverside of 
beef and pickled walnuts, some hot potatoes, if they 
can be got, a tankard of ale, and some bread and 
cheese, is a meal after which, — 

Serenely calm, the epicure may say ; 

* Fate cannot harm me ; I have dined to-day.’ * 

I may note — for it is well to be careful in im- 
portant matters — that the ale, if possible, should 
be old Burton, the potatoes mealy, the pickled 
walnuts in their third year, and the beef a piece 
that has been cooked to get cold. The perfection 
of cold meat is that which has been cooked that 
it may be served as cold meat, and I well remem- 
ber the wink of a dear old country squire with a 


22 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


fussy Pharisaical wife, as he said to me while we 
were composing ourselves for lunch, “Cold leg of 
mutton, my boy, uncut. Susan will have no cooking 
on Sundays; at least, no meat. But she likes to see 
the joint come up whole. It’s keeping the Sabbath, 
and at the same time paying proper respect to High 
Day. And she’s quite right, my boy,” as his teeth 
closed on a thick slice cut from two-thirds down the 
leg, “quite right. If a man can’t eat cold mutton 
one day a week, I have no patience with him.” 

Philip’s tastes were very much those of this old 
gentleman. He had led a simple life for many 
years, and if a little knot of subalterns from the 
nearest garrison town had strolled in, in the early 
morning, and found him over a basin of bread and 
milk, sweetened with treacle, he would have been 
as utterly unconscious of anything extraordinary in 
his repast as was Cincinnatus when a deputation 
of the Patres Conscripti waited on him to beg that 
he would assume the dictatorship, and found him 
under a hedge engaged upon pickled pork and garlic 
with rye-bread and goat’s milk in his leather flask. 

In two points Philip strongly resembled the 
ancient Komans — in the fact that obedience to dis- 
cipline, including under discipline respect to his 
parents, was so natural to him that it was a part 
of his life. He would as soon have thought of dis- 
obeying his mother’s mere wish, even though she 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 23 


might not have expected compliance, as of driving 
down the market-place on the wrong side of the 
road ; and for the native simplicity which showed 
itself down to the very bloom on his cheeks, and 
the silkiness of beard, moustache, and whiskers, 
which had never known the touch of steel. He 
was, in fact, like a great schoolboy. 

These are the kind of men who, when they get 
the chance, do great things. They are born leaders 
of their fellows, and it will be a bad day for 
England when discipline and simplicity are super- 
seded, as they are now threatened to be, by a 
laziness that will not take the trouble even to com- 
prehend orders, and a self-indulgence so brought to 
its last stretch that it will not give itself the 
slightest trouble to gratify even its own immediate 
desire, but will throw it aside and take up with 
some other in its place. Nor, may I add, is it 
these Sybarites who make the best thing of life. 
Men like Clive and Wellington and Colin Campbell 
got more out of life, and more, as people say, out 
of their money, than ever did Thackeray’s Lord 
Steyne. There never yet was a self-indulgent man 
who worked his way to the front without money or 
powerful friends. Many very selfish men have, of 
course, done so, and always will do so to the end 
of time. But there is all the difference in the 
world between selfishness and self-indulgence. 


CHAPTER IV. 


HILIP was a known shot in the neighbour- 



hood. It is astonishing how, in a country 
where there is nothing much about which to talk — 
except the weather, the chances of the harvest, and 
the evil demon which is prompting Hodge to ride 
a walpurgis-night gallop on a cow for which he 
has not paid, through three smiling acres of glebe 
which the lustful proprietor is to surrender to him 
with all fixtures and “everything that adheres to 
the freehold,” most unconditionally, or else to take 
his chance before a vehmgericht of working men 
disposed to do justice after the style of Dan ton 
and Carrier — the doings of any gentleman possessed 
of land, or even what may be technically and 
politely termed an interest in land, are canvassed 
and discussed. 

It is known at the taproom of the chief hotel 
of the market-place what young lady has, or what 
young ladies have, an eye upon him; what his 
own matrimonial inclinations are — ^whether they be 
for the daughter of the Lord-lieutenant, or whether 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 25 


for the young lady at the bar of the “ Green 
Dragon,” who is known to be the daughter of a 
most respectable farmer, and a match that would not 
disgrace any gentleman in the county who might 
choose to make an Earl of Burleigh of himself. 

Public opinion was very strongly in Philip’s 
favour. People used to tell you what an excellent 
son he was to his mother although no doubt she 
had been a good mother to him. That was a matter 
nobody could gainsay who had lived in the neigh- 
bourhood for a month. In point of fact, he used 
to be held up as an example, much to the disgust 
of young men who played billiards on any other 
than market-days, or carried a betting book, or 
went up to town two or three times a month on 
“ important business ” — so important, indeed, that 
they would never consent to divulge either its 
nature or its result. 

Such was, at all events, the verdict of Fairminster 
into which Philip used to walk or to canter on 
his hack nearly every day, and the verdict of 
Fairminster was known to the country side, and en- 
dorsed by that important factor of public opinion. 

Christinas was over, and Philip was beginning 
to look out his tackle and get it in order for the 
spring campaign, not only against the coarse fish, 
but against his especial loves, the trout and the 
grayling. He was a born sportsman, and he would 


26 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^ S COURTSHIP. 


have told you with the most perfect truth, ‘‘Give 
me brown bread and a tin can of beer, I would sit 
up all night in a tree, or a week, if that may 
be on the chance of an old man-eater; and will 
whip a pool any number of hours running with 
nothing better than cold tea and biscuits, if there 
is a speckled one in it who ought to come out 
and who won’t come out, and who, consequently 
has to be made come out.” 

One morning, while busily engaged in tying flies 
and overhauling running-gear with a yard-to-yard 
inspection; and oiling winches and going over rods 
inch by inch with almost microscopic examination 
of every ring and splice; and sorting out last year’s 
rummage, such, for instance, as plummets and 
ledgers, split shot and silkworm gut, in good lengths 
without kink or flaw, Philip received a brief but 
cordial invitation to spend a fortnight at Isleworth 
Park. 

Now, Isleworth Park was the residence of Mr. 
Endesleigli, the Lord-lieutenant of the county, with 
whom Philip had hitherto only a slight acquaint- 
ance, limited to the hunting-field and the piazzas of 
the various hotels in the market-place. He took 
Mrs. Endesleigh’s letter to his mother. He felt 
much inclined to accept the invitation, for he knew 
that the shooting was the best in the county, and 
he also knew that he would have an opportunity of 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE*S COURTSHIP. 27 


wiping the eye of one or two county magnates, and 
more especially sons of county magnates, who had 
with obvious intention treated him de haut en has 
as a young man who had no claim to rank with 
the county families at all. 

Then, too, in a general kind of way, the whole 
thing would be fun, or most probably so. If it 
turned out dull, or if he found himself cold- 
shouldered, he need not remain. 

Mrs. Ainslie was excessively anxious that her 
son should accept the invitation. To her mind the 
Lord-lieutenant of the county was a practically 
much more important person than the Lord High 
Admiral, even should that most dignified functionary 
happen to exist in his own single person at the 
time, and not as a board of about a dozen members 
all more or less obsolete, approaching the fatal limit 
of superannuation, and not one of them capable of 
the great executive virtue of promptitude even 
if it were down to the purchase of an ounce of 
tin-tacks, a pint of turpentine, or a gallon of tar. 

“Philip must accept this invitation,” thought 
Mrs. Ainslie. “ I have always been most anxious 
that he should get into the best county society, 
and it is very kind of Mrs. Endesleigh to have 
asked him to Isleworth.” All the reasons that 
are natural to a mother and commendable in her 
tended in this direction. 


28 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^ S COURTSHIP. 


She, for her own part, was only anxious to be 
near her son to the end of her days, which would 
be of course impossible if he started exploring. To 
this arrangement he was now resigned : he had 
promised to remain with her, and she knew that 
his word was his bond. To her only and elder 
sister she wrote in these terms ; “ Philip looks a 
long way ahead. He loves me, and he has given 
me his promise to remain near me as long as I 
live; and he is not a man to give his promise 
lightly, as, for instance, to the first girl he may 
meet. I believe in my own heart that travel is his 
only love, and that he is plotting it out all day on 
the map, and with those cases of books that he has 
down from London in his right as a member of 
those learned societies to which he belongs. 

“ After he had gone to bed the other night, I 
went into his room, and took up a book lying on 
the table. It was about a place called Patagonia. 
The inhabitants of this place wear no clothes, and 
live under huts made of the skins of the emu and 
of large fish. It is difficult to tell the men from 
the women. Indeed, the women, if anything, are 
the taller, the stronger, the keener at seacraft, the 
more inhuman, and the uglier. They are all, from 
second teeth upwards, enthusiastic cannibals, and 
will follow a vessel for miles along the coast, 
waiting for a wreck, or to cut off a shore party 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 29 


sent for fruit or water. Then they have a roast. 
If you wish to land for fresh water, you must do 
so in a full party, every one of which is armed, 
and land where you can see a stream running out 
to the sea, so as to get your business over quickly. 
If they are civil and show you fruit and roots and 
dowers, jump into your boat at once and pull out 
to ride distance. The drst man who attempts to 
swim out to your boat give him a bullet through 
the brain, so into the second, and so into the third ; 
and take care that each bullet does its work 
completely and at once. Their test of a prophet or 
medicine man is, that he should be infallible. Let 
a native come to within ten yards if you like, 
but then have him straight through the forehead. 
He will no more train his gulls and dogs to catch 
dsh, or lie in wait in his abominable canoe for 
‘long pig.’ 

“This was the delightful spot Philip was reading 
about, and the very place he would revel in. 
Before I went to bed I restored the volume to 
its place on the table. I cannot honestly say that 
I read through it; but I picked up quite enough 
to enable me to judge of its contents. Now, if this 
was the kind of place to which Philip wanted to 
go, on, as he would say, his own hook, it was 
clearly my one duty to prevent him, even at the 
cost of seeing him married. Don’t think, my dear 


30 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^ S COURTSHIP, 


Julia, that I am writing slightingly of marriage. 
On the contrary; like all sensible women I bold 
it to be a most excellent institution, especially for 
our oivn sex. Besides, everybody marries nowa- 
days, except some very foolish women, and some 
very, very wise men. 

“At last my mind became so disturbed that I 
felt I ought to rely upon what legal sagacity I could 
summon to the aid of what I may be permitted, 
without suspicion of a pun, to call my mother-wit ; 
in other words, I considered it my duty to place 
the whole matter before a stronger head than my 
own. So I drove into Fairminster, and saw our 
family solicitor, Mr. Barker, and told him about 
everything. Mr. Barker pulled a face of portentous 
length, shook his head, dropped his jaw, and 
opined that the whole matter was one of great 
difficulty. 

“‘I don’t think so,’ I said, 'at all. Only my 
son is quick-tempered, and at his age possibly 
intolerant of a mother’s restraint, — not that he 
ever gives me the slightest cause for anxiety.’ 

“ ' Intolerant of fiddlestick ends,’ said the man 
of law, impatiently. ‘Let him know the alterna- 
tive, and see what he will do. As for travelling, I 
know all about travelling. I have met more 
travellers than one, and talked freely with them. 
In fact beyond their own stupid travels, they have 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


3 ^ 


nothing whatever about which to talk. Now you 
can roam about on the Continent from Calais to 
St. Petersburg, or take a tour through Italy, on two 
guineas a day all told, and you can do the whole 
thing easily if you will make your journey three 
or four months long. But if you want to leave 
civilisation, and to face bush, swamp, or jungle, 
your expenses will come much heavier than you 
think. You will want, according to the particular 
tiack you have laid out for yourself, such things 
as the track specially demands, which you can 
only learn at the port itself, and not always there. 
If, for instance, you are going to land from Table 
Bay in quest of really big game, you will want 
waggons, bullocks, subordinates black and white, a 
professional game-finder or spoor-hunter — or better, 
a couple (for if you only have one they tell me 
he gets lazy and pretends there is no other game 
about) — a couple of under-hands to clean the guns, 
watch the camp-fires at night, and do scullions’ 
work by day, and, however liberal and punctual 
may be your wages, an extra sjambok, or, better 
still, a slave-drover’s whip, a trophy from the old 
southern plantations, if you can manage to get 
hold of it. If you don’t want your throat cut, you 
must travel with all the pomp of one of the native 
princes through the territory you pass. He will 
demand backsheesh to a considerable amount in 


32 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE' S COURTSHIP. 


money, cloth, copper wire, brass beads, cheap 
cutlery, and china, including duffing clasp-knives, 
and, if you have happened to remember, cotton 
pocket-handkerchiefs, and condemned revolvers war- 
ranted to burst about the third time they are fired. 
With these you must set out. You will come 
back with a recurring malarial ague, possibly the 
remains of a serious sunstroke, your hair as grey as 
cotton waste, and your skin that of a well-kept 
pickled walnut. To this complexion all South 
African explorers must come, and do. 

“‘No, madam; put all your personal pressure on 
your son. 1 am not a Jesuit, and I do not often 
approve of doing evil that good may come of it ; 
but I think you might so far strain your conscience 
as to tell him that your father died of heart-disease, 
and that you are afraid you have got it yourself, 
for that you often feel faint and giddy without the 
least reason, that it is very unlikely you will last 
long, and that you hope and beg he will stop with 
you. When you are gone, of course, he will be his 
own master/ 

“Now, all thi^ good advice, my dear, was ad- 
mirable in its way; worth a guinea a folio, I have 
no doubt, which is, I am told, the fee demanded 
by a lawyer of large practice for his view of the 
situation in black and white. Only it turned out 
to be quite unnecessary; for the very first thing 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 33 


almost which Philip assured me when I began to 
discuss the matter with him was, that he should 
never leave England during my lifetime. 

‘"‘You are hardly strong enough yourself for the 
bush, my dear mother,’ he said ; ‘ and I am not 
going on the war- trail for enjoyment to leave you 
moping here at home. Were I such a selfish 
brute as that, I should deserve the flourbag, a 
hundred leeches, and the village pump.’ ” 

And so the matter of Philip’s career as an ex- 
plorer of unknown lauds went into abeyance, with 
the most ostentatious cheerfulness on that young 
gentleman’s part. He remarked, indeed, most pro- 
foundly, in the bar-parlour of the “Green Dragon,’’ 
that after all there was no place like home ; and 
that, whatever you might think of African game, 
the niggers themselves had no manners, their 
customs were beastly, and their honesty worse than 
questionable; to say nothing of the fact that, the 
moment the thermometer came to be equivalent to 
what we should consider here warm, you could 
detect a nigger a quarter of a mile off, so that you 
needed a strong stomach if you were to take your 
meals with self-possession. 


CHAPTER V. 


HILIP’S visit to Isle worth Park was to him 



exceedingly pleasant. There were most of 
the men he knew in the county there, and many 
that he had not previously met, but whom he 
found very good fellows. The shooting turned out 
to be even better than might have been expected 
for the time of year, and the evenings, after the 
withdrawal of the ladies, were extremely com- 
panionable. 

There was the usual mixture, of course, of men 
from London and men from the country; men 
who were obviously treading the extreme peaks 
of fashion, and men whose demeanour and bear- 
ing proclaimed them as ignorant of anything 
unconnected with business and its paths, as is a 
prize pig of the Eastern Question, or a parish 
beadle of the Integral Calculus. 

But in a country house it is always easy for the 
hostess, with tact, to avoid a combination of jarring 
elements. And particular care would seem on this 
occasion to have been exercised ; so that, roughly, it 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIR'S COURTSHIP. 35 


may be said Philip had never been in a lazy way 
more comfortable than he now found himself. 

How pleasant it is to be sometimes thoroughly 
lazy ! It is all very well to talk about the honesty 
and dignity of work — work with a great capital 
W to it — and to proclaim the regularity of your 
own habits. The men who talk in this way are 
usually the most irregular, and least to be relied 
upon, of any ; just as the men who are always 
ready at a minute’s notice with their fists in their 
pockets and the determination of Thermopylfe 
written large on their foreheads, are the very first 
upon occasion of real danger to recommend caution 
and to talk about the sacredness of life when it 
is put into your hands as a trust. 

Philip was a man who talked very little, indeed 
hardly at all, and who as yet had certainly not 
had even the chance of doing anything. Both 
nature and fortune had been kind to him in 
some ways, and cruel in others ; and he, regard- 
less of each, had lightly whistled his way down 
the path of life, his plans being the few I have 
already indicated, his wants none, because he had 
none that could not be satisfied at once, and his 
general temperament that of Father Christmas in 
a more than usually genial frame of mind. Such 
men as these are often magnctiques sans le savoir, 
and have an irresistible attraction, not for women 


56 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^ S COURTSHIP. 


only, but for children at the same time ; which 
shows how simple must be their character. 

Before Philip had been at Isle worth Park a 
couple of days, he discovered that there was a 
young lady in the house in whom he was, to put 
it miluly, considerably interested. Her name was 
Florence Keane, and she was daughter of the junior 
partner of the ancient and eminent banking house 
of Twitsen, Kitson, Dearlove, and Keane, and was 
staying with her father at the Endesleighs’ I 
may dispose of her father very briefly. When 
actually engaged at business, he attended to it 
with all his heart and soul. “ If,” said he, “ the 
master’s eye is always about, the crop will pull 
through almost any weather. If the masters eye 
is not about, the sun will do very little of itself 
against the birds, and the crop will have none of 
what Hodge calls 'generally looking after,’ which 
seems to mean, when Hodge gets it to do, sitting 
on a gate and whistling from sunrise to sunset, 
with occasional intervals for bread and cheese, cold 
bacon, and hard ale.” 

In fulfilment of his belief in this important 
maxim, Mr. Keane had his eye about in Lombard 
Street five days a week from ten to four, and on 
the sixth day from ten to two; and he then used 
to drive home in his barouche, rarely talking to 
his daughter, who always came to fetch him, if 


YOUNG MR. AINSLINS COURTSHIP. 37 


possible, except in monosyllables, and even those 
not always articulate. He was thinking, poor man, 
of his many ventures and of his numerous re- 
sponsibilities. When he got home, he would bless 
his fortune if there were no dinner-party or invita- 
tion to dinner; and, as far as he himself was con- 
cerned, would enjoy sitting up till twelve o’clock 
over a pint of port, of undoubted vintage, and a 
couple of cigars with whose history he was per- 
sonally acquainted. Such was his life and his 
doctors had several times told him that with only 
ordinary rare of himself he would certainly live 
to seventy or might very well hope for eighty- 
five or ninety, for that his constitution had, in their 
way of putting it, settled itself. 

Jrlr. Keane was a widower; he was rather more 
pleasant, both in manners and appearance, than 
were the bulk of well-to-do men of his age. Indeed, 
he was really a very good-natured man, and always 
tried to adapt himself to his company ; and with 
men a good-natured disposition goes far to fashion 
pleasant features. It would be ho praise to say 
that he was devoid of selfishness, as he could 
gratify his slightest wish without even throwing 
a shadow across the wishes of other people; and 
he was very much attached to his only child. I 
believe, indeed, if a jury of London physicians had 
declared residence in Mentone to be 


38 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^ S COURTSHIP. 


necessary for her he would, at any sacrifice of his 
own feelings, have retired from active participation 
in the affairs of the bank, which had long become 
as dear to him as are his stable-yard and kennels 
to a master of hounds, and have gone to the 
Kiviera as cheerfully as if he had been offered 
and were taking a seat at the Board of the Bank 
of England. 

And this reminds me that I have given no 
description of Florence Keane herself. The women 
who are the best-looking, or who, at any rate, 
impress men the most, are those whose beauty it 
is impossible to describe and to praise as if they 
were a piece of Sbvres or Dresden china. The 
women who leave an impression on you are those 
about whom there is some strong point, such as 
their height, or the strength of their features, or, 
it may be, even nothing more than the colour of 
their eyes or hair. 

In his estimate of female beauty, man has hardly 
yet got much beyond the barbarous age, which 
delights in brightly-tinted calico and sparkling 
glass beads, while it probably would regard with 
contempt a 'parure of black pearls, and prefer a 
gorgeous leopard’s-skin rug to .the most exquisite 
jacket of sable tail or silver fox that was ever 
purchased in St. Petersburg itself. Thus, then, I 
may briefly say that Florence would hardly have 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, sg 


been noticed at all by the young squires at an 
ordinary hunt ball, while an attache or a guardsman 
would have singled her out at once from the 
whole coterie. As for her features, I cannot make 
for my lady readers the sort of summary of her 
virtues that you see in a catalogue at Tattersall’s — 
Chestnut filly, four years, splendid action ; goes 
well in single and double harness, a good hunter 
and fast.” 

Florence was tall for her age, her face was very 
pale, and, though her eyes were dark, her hair 
was light auburn. Her figure was that of a girl 
who has learnt to “ bear her body ” in London, 
but who still retains all the freshness of country 
life. Such, very briefly, was her appearance; and, 
as I have already hinted, it was of that kind of 
which your ordinary ball-room young gentleman 
would, to use the phraseology of his native rank 
in life, think small beer, but which would, none 
the less, make observant men pause. 


CHAPTER VI. 


OW it so happened one morning that the 



hounds met at Five Coppices, a noted meet, 
being in the very centre of the district of four 
or five large country houses, all, as a rule, more 
or less full of guests, so that the place and its 
surroundings were known in that neighbourhood 
as *'The Squireries.” 

Foxes in this paradise for hond-fide members of 
the red-coated clan are only just not too plentiful; 
and the breed has been improved by judiciously 
turning down every now and then some great 
strong brutes from Norway almost the size of a 
collie, and with the patience and tenacity of a 
wolf. There is a liberal compensation fund, the 
farmers are all friendly, and most of them do a 
good bit of business in the way of breeding and 
making weight carriers. 

So that when once you hear ‘‘Gone away! gone 
away ! gone away 1 ” the only thing you need 
trouble yourself about, is to avoid the contretemps 
of being throut now a thing not at all unlikely in 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 41 


a country which is not only difficult but uncertain, 
and which, if planned in model, would be the 
ideal of a foK-hunter’s Kriegspiel. 

Miss Keane, who was passionately fond of 
hunting, came out with her father, who had never 
been a brilliant rider, or cared to distinguish himself 
that way, but who was yet as much at home in 
the pigskin as — although not a trained lawyer — 
he was on the bench at Petty or Quarter Sessions. 
He rode an immense iron grey with a good deal 
of bone, but devoid of that tendency to kicking 
which seems almost as peculiar to iron greys as 
are bolting and rearing to chestnuts. Florence, with 
whom he kept as closely as if he were her groom, 
rode a pretty little flea-bitten grey, with evidently 
enough of true Arab blood in it to make it a 
match in a long run for her father’s immense 
weight carrier. 

Philip was mounted by Mr. Endesleigh on a brute 
for which that gentleman made many unnecessary 
apologies. It was as ugly an animal as could be 
seen in a day’s march. Its immense ribs showed 
through its sides like those of an iron coasting- 
vessel in her declining years; its legs were strong 
and sound, but marvels of hideousness. It was rat- 
tailed, ewe-necked, and had a head like that of an 
ichthyosaurus, with eyes to match. There was also 
a distinct tendency towards string-haltedness, to- 


42 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


gether with an aggravating habit of shaking the 
head from time to time, as if experimenting to see 
how a curb and strong gag-snaffle can best be 
shaken off at one single twist. Altogether, it was 
an unpleasant and uncompromising monster, and the 
grooms, ignorant of what Philip could do, grinned 
as they saw the creature convey him down the 
avenue at an angle of forty-five, off-side leading, 
and with ominous contortions and twitchinors of 

O 

its entire system. 

Philip, for his own part, saw he had a “beast” 
to deal with, so he looked well both to his girths 
and stirrup leathers, then to the martingale, and 
thus having made a general survey settled him- 
self down into his seat and touched his gentleman 
up with the spurs, to let him understand at the 
outset that business was the order of the day. The 
monster took the hint more suo ; he put down 
his head and lashed out viciously. By way of 
answer he got a good jerk on the curb alone, with 
a second and sharper touch of the spur; then he 
shook his ugly old Roman -nosed head and began 
to consider matters seriously, still proceeding at a 
pace which was a mixture of contortions expressive 
of rage, disgust, and a general conviction that 
Englishmen as horsemen had ceased to be gentle- 
men, and were going to the devil. 

He was the sort of horse that would have de- 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 43 


lighted Mason, or Assheton Smith, or Captain 
Brooke, but would be by no means amusing to 
riders of an ordinary type. The continuous strain 
he threw upon the wrists was of itself enough to 
worry any man. If there is a vice in a horse 
which is more dangerous than another, it is rearing; 
if there is one more annoying and troublesome, it 
is boring. A boring horse, that does his best to 
take both your arms out at the shoulder, may be 
a most estimable beast in other respects, but he is 
not exactly the horse one would choose for one’s 
own private riding. If one is to exercise one’s 
arms without recourse to the artificial resources 
of a gymnasium, most of us would prefer to get the 
smith’s permission to swinging a sledge in his forge 
for half-an-hour, or to taking our turn in the saw- 
pit. The sledge gives far the prettiest work, and, 
if its weight be judiciously selected, is an admir- 
able tonic for young men who have worked their 
heads too much and their bodies too little. 

The day was the usual kind of day, and the 
company had the usual kind of sport. The earth- 
stoppers and other subordinates had done their 
duty; three foxes did not break cover at once and 
go off due north, south-west by west, and south- 
east by east, nor was there a chop in covert or 
any other such unpleasant incident. 

An immense dog broke quietly away, and was 


44 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


soon spied by an old farmer keeping watch on his 
own account on an eminence — one of those fine 
old men who hunt for the day’s sport, and not for 
personal glory or with any view to an ultimate 
deal. This old sage remained silent and immovable 
till Reynard could no longer hope to sneak back 
into cover, and no longer ran any risk of being 
chopped, and then he cantered ofi‘ slowly after 
him, waving his weather-worn old cap, and with 
a shout of “ Gone away ! ” that must have been 
heard in every adjacent hamlet. 

The hounds were on in a minute. It was a light 
southerly wind, and the air was warm and moist. 
The scent lay, so that, as the huntsman remarked, 
the hounds seemed to see it rather than anything 
else; they kept their noses so high in the air, 
much the same as if they were hunting the stag. 
And now Philip’s horse began to improve under 
difficulties. That astute animal saw that he was 
not going to be made a fool of, nor would be 
allowed to make a fool of his rider. He saw that 
if there was work to be done he would be headed 
straight for it, and exactly as the men who give 
the most trouble in garrison or barracks are often 
the most to be relied upon in active service, so he 
began to show his good qualities. He almost seemed 
to take Philip into his confidence, and to say to 
him, ‘"Well, I can see that you mean business. It’s 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 45 


a pleasure to be with you. You just sit quiet and 
leave the rest to me, and we will show some of 
these daisy-cutting lubbers how to do it.” If 
Belphegor ever entered the body of a horse, and 
if devils enter swine, why should they not horses ? 
Belphegor this day was animated by his super- 
natural namesake. He went straight for every- 
thing, without needing hands down to keep him 
in the path of duty. In fact, as Philip said after- 
wards, you might almost have ridden him with a 
packthread. And a strange sort of intelligence 
seemed to have "possessed him. It appeared as 
though he had treasured up memories of the 
country, and were making use of them on his own 
account. It would be tedious to go into details. 
Let me describe the conduct of this most admirable 
beast by saying that he did all he could to take 
the responsibility of the day’s work upon himself, 
and that he performed his duties with will and 
intelligence. 

There is an end to everything, even to the 
longest day’s run in existence. The hounds were 
now running in that steady manner which ofcen 
denotes the finish, and the hunt reached the brow 
of a hill where there was a small coppice. Rey- 
nard knew this of old. It was too small to shelter 
anything much larger than a fieldmouse, but there 
was a valley below with a little trout stream 


46 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE' S COURTSHIP. 


rippling through its midst, bubbling over rocks 
and boulders and under quaint stone bridges. 
Here, in holes in the bank, poor old Reynard had 
often hidden himself before, and for it, as his 
ultimum refugium, he now made. 

Down the hill he limped or straggled, all strength 
failing his weary limbs, till he reached the water- 
side. Then he plunged into the stream, and 
sneaked between some piles into a big hole under the 
bank. Philip in the first fl.ight had his eye on him. 

Now there is all the difference in this world 
between love of sport and skill* at it and in it 
(which may be acquired — and often is), and wood- 
craft, which is an innate gift. Take Gordon 
Gumming and St. Croix: they were shikarrees to 
the backbone. Their view of animals of every 
kind was that they were made to be killed. On 
the other hand, take Waterton, who would not 
allow a gun to be fired on his estate, and would 
declare that even owls were sensible to kindness. 
Philip was both keen at woodcraft and a born 
sportsman, and on this occasion it was clearly his 
duty to the company that the day’s sport should 
terminate in a complete fashion. 

He was off Belphegor’s back in a moment. That 
brute at any rate could be trusted for a few 
minutes to do nothing more than to blow out his 
lungs and shake himself. Then he jumped into 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


47 


the stream, and, making for the hole, thrust in 
his arm. This was a somewhat dangerous experi- 
ment, hut his boldness met with its reward. There 
was just a minute’s struggle, and then Philip had 
scrambled on to the bank with Reynard in his 
hands, and was holding him up with both of them 
high above his head in the most approved fashion. 

The huntsman was by his side in a moment, 
head, brush, and four pads were at once dismem- 
bered, and then the quivering carcase of the poor 
brute that had made so brave a struggle for its 
life was thrown among the hounds and rent to 
pieces in a second. 

The brush found its way to Miss Keane, in 
whose hat it was deftly fixed by the master himself. 
The head was by prescription Philip’s own, to be 
dealt with as he might think proper. The pads 
were almost scrambled for by some young gentle- 
men in jackets, who had not acquitted themselves 
at all ungallantly during the day. 

Then was held a council of war. All agreed that 
it was too late to draw again that day; it was 
also put and carried nem. con. that it had been 
an admirable run. The flasks of cherry brandy and 
cura^oa, and sherry and brandy, together with 
cigar cases, found their way from hand to hand; 
and then girths were slackened and saddles care- 
fully readjusted, and people began to separate in 


48 YOUNG MR. AlNSLtE^S COURTSHIP. 


various directions, the pack going off at its quiet 
covert trot to avoid stiff limbs next morning; the 
others going as you will. 

Philip rode up to Miss Keane. “It is six miles 
home,” he said, “and according to all rules we 
ought to devote at the very least three-quarters of 
an hour to them. What has become of your 
father ? ” 

“I don’t know,” she said; adding, with a smile, 
“ I am rather afraid he has been thrown out.” 

“I hope he has not met with an accident,” ex- 
claimed Philip, with a devout enthusiasm and 
anxiety that was almost comical. 

“Oh no! I am sure he has not; anyhow, my 
dear old father never does get hurt. It is a 
wonder to me he doesn’t, for he is always getting 
a purl. But he has the heart of a schoolboy, and 
I am sure that if anything has happened it is no 
worse than a shaking at the most, or what the 
surgeons call severe contusions of the ribs and 
cartilages.” 

“You seem well up in surgical matters,” said 
Philip. 

“Well,” she answered, “I got hold of one of 
those gentlemen once at dinner, and I put him 
through his facings about these things. After 
telling me that he was letting me into secrets as 
terrible as those of Freemasonry, he imparted to 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIR'S COURTSHIP. 49 


me enough to make me quite learned. Let me 
put you up to a few of the things, Mr. Ainslie.” 

“ I shall be delighted,” said Philip. 

‘.Ecchymosis of the eye ’ means nothing more 
or less than a black eye. It may be severe or 
slight, a.id it may be extensive or limited. If 
severe and extensive — which only means bad in 
six syllables instead of one — it should be treated 
with leeches. If not it should be left to nature. 
That is a specimen of the way in which they 
darken knowledge by words without understanding. 
Then, if you have strained your ribs a bit, they 
say that there is no positive fracture, but that the 
intercostal membranes need support, and they put 
you on your back for a foitnight with bandages 
round you, coming to ask you how you are and 
to look at your tongue three times a day. You are 
really not half so bad as a little boy whom a big 
boy has thrashed with a ground ash sapling, and 
who has to go about as if nothing had happened. 
And you certainly stand in no need of a diet of 
rusks and barley-water.’" 

“You don’t seem to have a very high opinion 
of surgeons. Miss Keane.” 

“ Oh, I don’t say that these gentlemen don’t 
know their business, but I insist upon it that they 
belong to the great class of jobbing tradesmen of 
whom John Leech first taught us the natural his- 

4 


50 YOUNG MR, AINSLINS COURTSHIP, 


tory, and has been followed by Sullivan in his 
British Tradesman and British Workman. Oh 
no ! if ever I had an accident I would be taken to 
the nearest public hospital as a paying patient. 
There you get proper attention, and not too much 
of it; you are looked after carefully, but are not 
made the subject of needless fuss. Those are my 
opinions, Mr. Ainslie, although I do not know how 
far you concur with them.” 

Philip replied, in the most courtly manner, that 
the perfection of common sense was the perfection of 
wisdom, and that as to the wisdom of what Miss 
Keane had said, there could be no doubt. There 
is the rough treatment, he explained, and the cos- 
seting treatment. If you are dealing with a healthy 
adult or a big boy, you want that rough-and- 
ready treatment which old Abernethy only exag- 
gerated in his manner, being in practice the most 
cautious of men and the least rougli-and-ready of 
his contemporaries. If you are dealing with a 
sickly woman or a delicate child, you must adopt 
judicious cosseting. But even so, what would you 
do with the child that persists in crying with a 
slight pain ? You would be mad to give it opiates ; 
you must simply let it howl until it is tired. 

Now this was a somewhat unsympathetic way 
to talk d pro^jos of a possible accident to old Mr, 
Keane, even if a cheerful way; but Miss Keane 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 


51 


remarked, with the air of a chairman closing a 
discussion, that her father had the luck of nine 
other men and his own, both in business and out 
of it, and that she for her part felt no anxiety. 
This view of the situation Philip, of course, 
accepted, and there was consequently no more to 
be said on the subject ; nor, indeed, would there 
have been time for more, as they were now close 
upon the gates of Isle worth Park, and were in 
a few minutes standing in the hall. They were 
certainly not the first arrivals, but they were also 
by no means the last. It was five o’clock, and 
dinner would be served as usual at eight. The men 
were invited to repair to the billiard-room to do 
as they pleased in the interval. Philip went there, 
and found— for it was a sociable house — sixpenny 
pool going on at a rather lingering rate, as every- 
body was playing; and a servant busy with drinks, 
of which the favourite seemed to be a seductive 
one, but hardly to be recommended by the faculty, 
consisting of equal portions of red or green curagoa 
with brown brandy. One young subaltern was so 
stimulated of this genial cordial as to carol out, 
in his voice hardly as yet cracked — 

“ Vive V amour / Cigars and cognac ! 

Hurrah ! Hurrah ! on these we’ll bivouac.** 

After which he turned scarlet with sudden con- 
sciousness of his breach of decorum, and retreated 


52 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


humbly into the farthest corner of the remote 
window-seat. 

The conversation was mixed but unanimous. 
Here, as elsewhere, until it was time to dress for 
dinner, nothing was talked about except the run, 
which it was agreed was equal to anything recorded 
that season in the Field. And then the dressing- 
bell rang and they separated, to meet again at dinner. 


CHAPTER VIL 


T~^ INNER, after a day at the tail of the hounds, 
is, as a rule, monotonous and dull. All the 
men are, or certainly ought to be, thoroughly tired 
out, and not capable of any intellectual sally; 
many, indeed, are barely capable of doing more 
than murmuring acquiescence to what their right 
or left-hand neighbour may say. 

When the dinner consists of men alone, as when 
the bulk of a regiment in barracks have ridden 
out, things are a little livelier. With the disappear- 
ance of the cheese commences the complete removal 
of restraint. The president of the week solemnly 
gives the toast of “The Queen;” and the colonel, 
even if he be not much of a smoker, gives the 
signal for complete liberty by sticking a cigar or a 
cigarette in his mouth. Now, if anything is certain 
in this uncertain world of ours, it is the fact that 
to be a good chdtelain requires as much tact as to 
be a good ambassador. I am sure it is so in an 
English country house in the hunting season, espe- 
cially if the run has been either good or bad beyond 


54 YOUNG MR. A INSURES COURTSHIP. 


the average. The men come back from the day’s 
work thoroughly tired. After any severe exercise 
— and there is none more severe than riding to 
hounds — the muscles require a good hot bath. Now 
it is difficult in the best arranged country house to 
give each of your guests a hot bath at the same time. 
You could not do so even in the best appointed 
hotel in London. 

Then some of the men are literally so tired that 
they go to sleep almost over their soup, and, were 
they dining alone, would probably be snoring audibly 
before the black coffee had arrived; and the better 
the day’s sport may have been the deeper is sure 
to be the degree of somnolence. 

The ideal dinner after a good day with the 
hounds is what you would get at the “ Angel,” 
or the “Crown,” or the “Bull,” in the market- 
])lace, where they hold the farmers’ ordinary — a 
basin of soup, a slice off a haunch, a greengage 
or apple tart, Stilton cheese, and a bottle of sound 
wine. 

Who would dare to set such a dinner before 
ladies ? You might as soon produce brown bread 
and garlic with a clasp-knife, remarking that it 
was a serviceable knife and would do anything, 
from toasting cheese to opening a vein, and so 
curing a tem[)orary attack of staggers in your 
favourite roadster. 


YOUNG MR. A IN SUE'S COURTSHIP. 55 


Most men, whether they will own as much or 
not, would be thankful to be relieved of the re- 
straint which the presence of ladies in season and 
out of season continually imposes on them. And 
this is especially the case after a hard day’s hunt- 
ing. On the other hand, there is a growing 
tendency on the part of a certain section of the 
gentler sex to make their presence felt at the 
most inopportune times. 

Only fancy what a smoking-room of a club 
would be if there were little tables in it with silver 
honhonnihrcR, at which ladies were permitted to 
suck maraschino and water, and stay themselves 
with nougat and rahat lakoum. Man does not 
penetrate the recesses of the ladies’ boudoir, nor 
even attempt to do so, except on proper occasions. 
Nor ought women who wish to please to be 
always worrying to force their way into the 
masculine sanctum. Certainly, if they heard what 
was said of them on their departure they would 
hardly repeat the experiment. 

“She’s wall-eyed, if ever there was one.” 

“ Yes, my boy, and, like the lighthouse on Lundy 
Island — one eye stationary with a steady light, and 
the other rotating and so only flashing at intervals, 
but when it shows itself it’s a nailer indeed.” 

“Wonder women can’t see when they’re in the 
way.” 


56 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 


‘‘They can’t see any more than schoolboys can, 
or pug dogs. Schoolboys will tell you that they 
only want three-and- sixpence more towards their 
new bat, possession of which will qualify them for 
the sixteenth eleven, or something of that sort. 
Pug dogs come in from the mud and try to jump 
on your knee ; if you repel them with gentle vio- 
lence they endeavour to make certain of your 
intention by consistently and persistently climbing 
up your trousers, or scratching at them with their 
muddy feet.” 

Such is the universal opinion of men in the 
smoking-room, and it is greatly to be wished that 
women could sometimes hear it. It would be an 
admire.ble lesson for a great many of them. Now- 
a-days there is no woman so popular in society as 
an American lady. But there is nothing a man 
dislikes so much as your g'?iasi-American or Ameri- 
canized girl, who has a criticism ready for every- 
thing, usually her own, and almost ludicrous for the 
amount of solid ignorance it can display impromptu. 
Ignorance as dense as that memorable London fog 
of which a witness produced a chunk and laid it 
down on the Committee Table of the House of 
Commons, remarking, as he undid the papers in 
which it was wrapped, that he had hewn that 
specimen out with his clasp-knife two hours ago, 
in front of the Trinity House, the highest elevation 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 57 


in the City, but that down on the river level it 
was of a superior texture, and he should have 
wanted a saw or an ice axe. 

It fell — things happen by strange coincidences 
in this world, with which, very often, chance is 
not wholly concerned — to Philips lot to take Miss 
Keane down to dinner. Of course, as soon as they 
were seated, up to which moment any practical 
conversation is impossible (unless you be in a 
ducal mansion with a staircase as high as Jacob’s 
ladder, and very like it, only that the supers 
who ought to be doing the angels seem to be on 
strike) Philip began about Mr., Keane. . 

“ I don’t see your father. Miss Keane. I hope 
after all that he did not meet with an accident.” 

“Yes, he did have a fall, but he was not hurt 
at all — at least, not seriously. He was perhaps 
a little bruised, and shaken, and he has gone 
to bed.” 

A malicious smile came to Philip’s lips as he 
thought of Leigh Hunt’s item under the heading 
of Court News. “His Koyal Highness the Prince 
Regent, while out with the Royal Buckhounds 
yesterday, and gallantly leading the first flight, 
was thrown from his horse with terrible violence ; 
fortunately he fell upon his head and no serious 
consequences are anticipated.” 

Jhen they talked about the run, and the prospect 


58 YOUNG MR, AINSLINS COURTSHIP, 


of future , runs, and began to talk each at the other, 
with the conscious purpose of self-display, which is 
the first step toward fiirtation, and a good long 
step too. And then, having got down to Mr. 
Irving and the latest opera of Herv^’s, and other 
such things, they found tliemselves at a check, and 
Philip was not unthankful when Mrs. Endesleigh 
gave the signal for the ladies to retire. 

The jolly old squire announced that coffee would 
be in directly for those who wanted it, on which 
roll he himself should not muster. Then an at- 
tendant placed on the table cigars of varying 
strength and different brands, and handed round 
liqueurs, and for about half-an-hour nothing was 
discussed save politics, game, horseflesh, and a little 
of the money market. 

Game led them to Mr. Chamberlain, who was 
described by a Tory archdeacon as a man who 
did not know the muzzle of a breach-loader from 
its butt, and who spent all his money upon orchids 
— a sort of flower which he said was only fit for 
your button-hole, and, as a rule, hideously ugly 
even there. 

The Lord- Lieutenant opined that the orchid mania 
was like the tulip mania — that it would go from 
bad to worse, that a number of people would half 
ruin themselves by giving fancy prices for bulbs or 
tubers or suckers, then one day the whole thing 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE*S COURTSHIP, 59 


would collapse, exactly as the tulip craze did, and 
that orchids, which the day before were worth 
twenty pounds, would be worth half-a-crown or 
three shillings. 

Most of the guests concurred in this view. One 
of them remembered an astute old jeweller in Bond 
Street, who bought up every opal he could lay his 
hands on until he had practically emptied the 
market, and then persuaded a most exalted personage 
to accept a necklace, tiara, and bracelet of faultless 
gems as uniform in tint as it was possible to find 
them. Immediately a craze set in for opals, and the 
long-headed dealer found that opals which had cost 
him twenty pounds were now worth a couple of 
hundred. He did what all wise holders ought to 
do; he just waited for a few hours to make sure of 
his position, and he then realized upon the rising 
market. He had retired from business now, and 
had a beautiful estate at Hendon, a pretty village 
which West-end tradesmen have long ago portioned 
out among themselves. 

A rector who was present — a fat middle-aged 
man with a port-wine face and an episcopal jowl 
— made some more or less inappropriate remarks 
upon human vanity, and upon the uncertainty of 
things below. 

A banker remarked that gold in the form of 
bullion was about the only thing of any permanent 


6o YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


value, and that even that was liable to constant 
fluctuations, as politicians were very well aware, 
using, indeed their knowledge for that purpose. 
“ Prince Bismarck,” he recklessly asserted, “ bought 
and sold French Kentes, and speculated in English 
stock, more largely than any man in Europe ; while 
the Rothschilds, oddly enough, had the bulk of their 
money in American securities. Funds,” he said, 
“ were of all the best securities, where a nation had 
resources behind it and was of established credit — 
an inexhaustible soil like France, or coal and iron 
like England. When countries such as these 
borrow, they simply add to their resources and 
consolidate them.” 

All this was very new to Philip with his few 
hundreds a year, and very interesting, and it a little 
bewildered him to hear men talking of millions 
as if they were five-pound notes. 

“One lives and learns,” he said to himself. ^‘I 
wonder how many of these dear old gentlemen have 
ever speared a good heavy dog otter. But we are 
poor creatures, after all. I myself am as fond of 
sport as any man, and never on any account let 
business interfere with it, but I have never yet 
faced a tiger, or — ” and here he sighed deeply — 
“bowled over a grizzly by that fatal wound 
between the two collar-bones.” 

“ It must be rather fine,” said a young guards- 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 6i 


man to Philip, wake in the morning and go 
to your office like a Johnnie does that I know, 
and look at your papers, and call in your con- 
fidential clerk and managing man, and say, 
‘ Wilkins, we must make sixty thousand pounds 
to-day in Ecuadors.’ ‘Yes, sir/ ‘Wire to our 
man to buy. If there is a fall, tell him to hold 
on. He is on no account to sell. If the stock 
fluctuates with little rushes in it, tell him to buy 
to two hundred and fifty thousand. That is all 
I shall do to-day. After you close here come 
down to the ‘ Trafalgar ’ at Greenwich. I shall 
be dining there, and I should like to hear all 
you have to tell me.* That’s the way you make 
money in the City, if you have oi ly a little capital 
to begin with.” 

“ Yes,” said the archdeacon, who, like many 
clergymen, was himself of a speculative turn of 
mind ; “ they tell me that the men who make 
money out of stocks and shares, and railways and 
mines, are men who have hardly been to any place 
in the world except London and Brighton, who could 
not take a map of the United States and boldly 
put their pencil on the Erie, the Atlantic and 
Great Western, and Cleveland, Cincinnati, and 
Indianapolis; who could not tell a chunk of hard 
graphite from a chunk of coke of the same dimen- 
sions; and who, when it is shown them for tba 


62 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


first time, take the shaft of a mine to be a well 
of rather more than usual depth and size, worked 
by a donkey engine!” 

Then old Mr. Endesleigh proposed that they 
should join the ladies. “ In my younger days,” 
he said, “ there was none of this nonsense, and 
one could finish one’s wine in peace; now it is 
all changed, and I can only say I am very sorry 
for it.” And so the jolly old gentleman led the 
way to the state staircase. Philip, who did not 
return to the drawing-room, for the one and simple 
reason that he was afraid of going to sleep and 
liaving to be woke up, retired to his own quarters. 
He had intended to go to bed; fortune, however, 
was for some hours unfavourable to him, for he 
sat down in his chair before the fire to watch the 
pictures in it for a few minutes, and, before he 
had even made out a bridge with a torrent under 
it, was fast asleep and snoring. 

It was nearly eight in the morning when the 
snow woke him, by the sudden fall it caused in 
the temperature. He went to the window. It 
was thickly crusted with frozen sleet. So he shook 
himself, turned down the little French reading- 
lamp, and jumped into bed. 


CHAPTER VHL 


XSLE WORTH PARK was an immense rambling 
house, one of those which Americans so envy 
us — not without reason — and of which they build 
themselves replicas at Buffalo and Long Branch. 
They do not do this out of ignorance. Never 
make the mistake of putting down a Yank as 
ignorant. He has figured out your measure in the 
tables of his mind before you have ceased wonder- 
ing at the scriptural quaintness of his phraseology, 
the woodenness of his demeanour, and that curious 
intonation which really has great merits. 

An American likes what is old-fashioned. No 
man has such a hatred of shoddy as your genuine 
American, or such a contempt for nouveaux richep^ 
or such a respect for quiet, honest, straight-going 
men, who are not place-hunters, or wire-pullers, or 
jobbers. Abraham Lincoln was one of the best types 
of an American gentleman, and at Isleworth Park 
the old rail-splitter would have been perfectly at 
home. 

It was full of unexpected rooms, rooms in which 


64 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


you found yourself trapped without any intention 
on your own part of entering them. You intended 
to leave the morning-room, with its table of news- 
papers and its battery of writing apparatus, and 
you opened a door and stumbled into a great oak- 
panelled chamber, the walls of which were covered 
with trophies and weapons of the chase, while on 
the table were cigars and the sporting papers, and 
a large siphon and a cunningly devised basket con- 
taining bottles of liqueur. And so, without calling 
a servant, you could light your own cigar and mix 
your own brandy and soda, and before you com- 
menced to seriously study your Field look at a 
famous broken otter spear belonging to the master 
of the house, and at the head of the otter, which, 
when the shaft of the weapon in question had 
passed through its body, seized it in its teeth and 
snapped it with its last dying effort. It was a 
room Whyte Melville or Landseer might have chosen 
as his own study, fitted with the eye of an artist 
and the taste and knowledge of a keen sportsman. 

On a table in the window were several port 
folios, each page containing four or five specimens 
of salmon or trout fly. Under each fly, or almost 
each, was written some forcible remark — ‘‘Very 
good in the Exe, no good whatever in the Dart.’' 
“Caught eight fine bass with this in an hour from 
a punt off Plymouth Breakwater.” “Good in un- 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 65 


certain weather when the wind is south-east by 
east.’^ Then would come something emphatic — “ A 
nailer for small trout in shallows and rapids after 
a freshet.” Or again, Have a few casts with this 
before you take to your minnow.” One subscription 
approached levity — Brass and red hackle for 
muggy weather.” 

Philip, finding himself in this room soon after 
breakfast, settled down into an arm-chair, and 
began to peruse the room album — a most interesting 
chronicle of household events. 

“ 1808 — Captain Murray, 92nd Highlanders, and Mr. Vansittart, 
for ten pounds. Captain Murray does not jump the Avenue Gates 
with twelve yards’ run. Six trials to he allowed. Won by 
Captain Murray in stout stockings, second trial.” 

“April, 1827. Lower end of Water Avenue. Five rooks to two 
consecutive shots. C. Anstruther, The Uplands.’ 

Then followed a somewhat scurrilous record, 
headed by a neatly- coloured picture of a stout, not 
to say corpulent, gentleman in fox-hunting apparel, 
with his coat tails over one arm and his crop 
firmly clutched in the hand of the other. The 
caricature was evidently from life. Underneath was 
written, “ Tops and Bottoms. N.B.— The largest 
baby need not be frightened.” 

It takes very little to make people laugh in a 
country house, when there is a good kitchen, a 

6 


06 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


good cellar, good attendance, and perfect laissez 
faire in all domestic arrangements. 

As Philip was closing this interesting collection 
with a healthy laugh at the last, which was a 
diptych, of which the first tablet represented his 
host boldly venturing on the ice with a double- 
barrelled gun, and the second depicted the same 
gentleman minus gun and hat, and drenched 
through, but triumphantly carrying home, between 
the finger and thumb of his right hand, an infini- 
tesimal snipe, about the size and rather less than 
the weight of half-a-crown, the door opened and 
Miss Keane came in. 

I honestly believe that her appearance on the 
scene was entirely accidental, and that she had 
really only come to see if the Field had given a 
full account of a run in which she had taken a 
prominent part the week before ; but, accidentally 
or not accidentally, she was there, and, of course, 
she and Philip began to talk. 

It is curious how rapidly we are becoming Ameri- 
canized in our habits. In the States they know 
as well as we do in England how to begin and 
how to finish a conversation, but they pique them- 
selves on their defiance of the conventionalities; 
insist on asking a stranger whom they have never 
met before whether that is his eldest boy, and 
whether he goes to “ Eatoun , ” whether that is his 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 67 


eldest daughter, and whether she is ‘'going off” or 
not; whether he was “raised” in Londoa or in the 
provinces; and also whether he is interested in the 
political crisis as it is at present “ simmering on.” 

“ You are idle to-day, Mr. Ainslie,” Florence 
began. 

“ Well, perhaps so. Miss Keane. But it^s the 
fault of circumstances. The snow stops all hunting, 
of course, and the birds can hear your steps 
crunching the crisp surface long before you are 
within reach of them. There is one kind of sport 
which they have in snow, and which I should like 
to try, and mean to try some day, if I can.” 

“ What is that ? ” she asked. 

“ Why, the running down elk on snow-shoes. 
Your elk, you know. Miss Keane, is an immense 
creature, as big as those great barouche horses that 
you see in London, and which are (like the fat 
coachman who drives them, and the six-feet-six 
footman who is either sitting by him on the box, 
or, if the carriage is waiting, standing at the door) 
kept as ohids de luxe, and not for any purposes of 
genuine utility. Well, if you are at all a woods- 
man, you can tell by the mere look of the country 
where the snowdrifts lie. Crevasses and that kind 
of thing do not exist at ordinary heights, so out 
you go on your snow-shoes with your rifle until 
you come on the trail of your elk. This you 


68 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


follow by your eye till you come up with the brute, 
and then you make for him. He cannot turn and 
go for you, for with his small deer’s feet and 
fetlocks he would stand no chance over the snow 
against your snow-shoes ; so before many minutes 
are over you have drawn your bead upon him 
and brought down a very gallant beast; and even 
when he is in the snow up to his shoulder-blades 
give him a wide berth, for an old elk is as vicious 
and as cunning as a bull. Now I call that sport 
for kings. But I think uncommonly little of shoot- 
ing as I see it here in England. Deer-stalking 
is practically - the only real sport we have left 
us, and that is as devoid of danger, except from 
accidental falls, as is cricket or polo.” 

Miss Keane laughed. “ There’s a good deal of 
truth, no doubt, in what you say. There is some 
sport, of course, into which you cannot well import 
an element of danger, and which has no element of 
danger in it of its own — partridge-shooting, for 
instance. If I were a man I would as soon retail 
ribbon by the yard as bowl over partridges by 
the brace. Pheasant-shooting! You may as well 
go into the poultry-yard with a walking-stick, and 
single out and bring back with you a dozen choice 
Cochin Chinas. The whole thing is a farce.” 

Philip acquiesced, and Miss Keane proceeded: 

“You talk enthusiastically about sport, Mr. 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 69 


Ainslie, and yet you told me last night you had 
never been out of England.” 

** No, but I am always reading books of travel 
when I can get the chance, and I have collected 
a perfect library of them, enough to stock a book- 
shelf with four cupboards to it. I don’t know that 
there’s any part of the world, from Central Asia 
down to Patagonia, where I could not tell you, out 
of my books, what there is to kill and how to kill it.” 

“ Ah yes ! If you are a born sportsman like that 
I suppose nothing will keep you from it.” 

I don’t think anything will when I get the 
chance.’^ 

“ It must be a fascination like crewel- work, or 
beggar-my-neighbour, or table-turning — amusements 
which I am told all prudent persons avoid, as, if 
you become at all apt in any one of them, you are 
certain thenceforth to give your whole mind to it, 
and to nothing else. Americans, my father tells 
me, are, many of them, so passionately fond of 
poker that they will run the risk of losing a really 
important bargain rather than leave the table, if 
they happen to hold a full hand, and I have 
known English people quite as enthusiastic over it.” 

“ I cannot conceive anything more fascinating 
than real sport,” said Philip. 

“There’s one thing I cannot understand about 
you,” returned Miss Keane. “I am told that you 


70 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 


are in no profession; that you are not even study- 
ing one ; that you don’t even take the trouble 
to hold a commission in the yeomanry or the 
militia. It seems so strange. It may be an old- 
world fancy with me, but I cannot bear the idea 
of a man letting his years, and his best years too, 
slip hopelessly away. You know what Allingham 
says : 

* What saith the river to the rushes grey ? 

Kiver slowly wending, rushes sadly bending ; 

Who can tell the whispered words they say? 

Youth and prime, life and time for ever, ever, ever 
fled away.’ 

If I were a man I would do something, however 
little it might be. I would work at something, 
whatever it might be, at which a gentleman can 
work without degradation. I don’t think I should 
like to be a cabdriver, or a draper’s assistant, 
though it is better to be either of these than to 
live upon your friends, as I know many men do 
without the least shame; or upon your wits, as 
a few men do who make a comfortable income 
without suspicion of unfair play, and very probably 
without in the least degree deserving the suspicion, 
by their 4carU or baccarat. I have heard papa say, 
before many men, that in the winter time he 
seldom makes less than fifty or a hundred pounds a 
week at the Cosmopolitan. I see no harm in 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 




gambling at all, if you can afford to lose, and play 
fairly. The man, however, who lives upon his 
friends is soon found out in that narrow circle, and 
ostracized from it; while the man who lives upon 
the public and by his wits is a marked man, and 
his future, if he ever had any, is as hopelessly 
blocked as if an avalanche had fallen across it, and 
were beginning slowly to melt and drip away into 
a glacier.” 

“Well,” answered Philip, "I can hardly under- 
stand why I have not gone into any profession 
myself. I suppose natural indolence and disinclina- 
tion to face the bother of examinations has had a 
good deal to do with it. I had enough of them 
at the university, and there your examinations are, 
more or less, a farce; but it is a different matter 
when you have to try for the Indian Civil Service, 
or for the Engineers.” 

“ Then you might have gone to the bar.” 

“ Yes, and I might have got clients, but I should 
never have kept them. On the whole, I don’t think 
the bar would have suited me ; I have not sufficient 
love of drudgery in me. I cannot go out day after 
day and water the soil if it be thirsty, and invent 
snares to catch the birds, and scarecrows to drive 
them away; and when the plant pushes its nose 
above the ground to protect it with tanned nets, 
pegged out dd terrificandum. No, if peas are 


72 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


to give all this trouble I would sooner go without 
them altogether.” 

“ Then what shall you do, Mr. Ainslie ? ” 

“ Heaven alone knows — which means that I make 
no pretence to do so myself. I shall stop in Eng- 
land for some years — yet at any rate as long as 
my dear mother lives. She has set her heart on 
that, and of course she must have her way. If I 
outlive her, and if circumstances are not changed 
and I am in my present frame of mind, I shall go 
off somewhere or other, somehow or other. America 
is not very far, with the Rockies and the Alle- 
ghanies. In Greenland, if you go well north, you 
can get reindeer, and see the winter sun at mid- 
night. In Patagonia sport is infinite, and if 
game fails you can shoot the natives, who are 
treacherous cannibals, utterly incapable of civiliza- 
tion, and, being ‘ pizen * wherever you meet them, 
have no claim for quarter. In fact, good sport is 
always within your reach if you will take the 
trouble to find it out, and if you will take a little 
more of the trouble, with the same object, there is 
as good sport as ever Nimrod had. Who can 
want a better morning’s bag than a two-horned 
rhinoceros, or a couple of lions? So long as the 
world can give me sport like this, I would sooner 
live my own life than go into a business or pro- 
fession to make money out of . other men, and I 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 73 


think I have a perfect right to do as I please 
with my own life. The matter concerns nobody 
but myself.” 

^‘That is more than you can possibly tell, Mr. 
Ainslie. We have some sort of knowledge of what 
we are doing, but hardly any of what its effects 
may be. I shall not argue with you, and so I 
tell you plainly'; but I think that every man, 
however alone he may be in the world, has his 
duty. Suppose, for instance, he were dropped from 
a balloon on to an island, the very locality of 
which on the map is unknown to him, he ought 
to feel that he owes a duty to the inhabitants, 
and to endeavour, as best he can, to work it out.” 

“And I will not argue with you, Miss Keane, 
because you would be sure to get the better of 
me somehow; but I stick to what I think, and I 
do not mean to give up my notion. I am a 
little like the farmer who, being complimented by 
his rector on the attention he displayed during 
sermon, remarked that he liked sermon the best of 
all the service. In the first place, he explained, 
there were no false starts, putting everybody wrong 
and out of breath, and in the next place you could 
if 3^ou were so disposed, go right ofi* to sleep, and 
nobody would take any notice of you until you 
began to snore, when the pew-opener would of 
•jourse come round and tap you on the shoulder, 


74 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


but with no assumption of moral reproof in doing 
so. Well, if there is one thing I enjoy more than 
another it is entire liberty and freedom. I daresay 
you recollect iEsop’s old fable of the wolf and the 
house-dog. I would not for anything bear the mark 
of the collar on my neck. To be brief, I will be 
no man’s servant, I will stand at no man’s beck 
and call, and I will keep the threads of my own 
life, poor as they may be, in my own hands.” 

She laughed lightly. “ Are you not afraid of 
being misunderstood, and being put down as 
fantastic, or, worse, conceited?” 

'‘No, I think not. I always mean what I say. 
If I were to tell you that I was going to Paris 
to find work, I should not mean that you would 
be certain to come across me somewhere between 
the Madeleine and the Place de I’Op^ra, between 
three and six in the afternoon. I should mean that 
I was going in for real work, and that if I 
did not find it I should come away. Life is so 
short that it seems to me a sin to waste a minute 
of it, if you can possibly avoid doing so. I like 
the man who, if his oculist does not forbid him, 
and he is not travelling through a new or a very 
beautiful portion of the country, brings out his 
book and reads. When a sailor whose heart is in 
his work has nothing else to do, he settles himself 
down against the bulwarks and knots or splices. 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 75 


A soldier’s range of view is more limited, but 

even he can burnish his scabbard ; while, if he 
be in a heavy cavalry regiment, his cuirass and 
helmet will take as much of his time in burnish- 
ing as he may choose to bestow upon them. 
There are many men in the Life Guards and 
Blues, men who are saving money out of their 

pay and allowances, and looking forward to a 
country beershop, with a snug piece of garden, 
who make several shillings a week very easily by 
burnishing the armour of their less industrious 
comrades, and cleaning their black chargers in 

the orthodox manner, which is no easy task.” 

“Still, you ought to do something, Mr. Ainslie. 
I wish I could help you to see that.” 

“ So I ought, and so you shall, Miss Keane. 

But our systems require keeping up in this weather, 
and I am sure we ought to have some luincheon. 
There is the bell; let us go m.” 


CHAPTER IX. 


EXT morning, when Philip turned out of bed, 



it was evident that the frost was holding, 
or perhaps more than holding, its own, for even this 
young gentleman, with all his sturdiness, showed 
a slight tendency to swerve at the sight of his 
tub. When he came downstairs he was, as usual, 
one of the first, so after a cigarette in the garden, 
which enabled him to return fully satisfied as to 
the present state of the weather at any rate, he 
made his way to the breakfast-room, where the 
butler, who was superintending two footmen who 
were engaged in laying breakfast, informed him that 
Mr. Jobson had come up from the village with 
the news that the pool was bearing famously, and 
did not want any sweeping, and that young Daller 
had thrown a great brickbat on to it and had not 
even starred it. There was a providence in things, 
the butler added, for George Badcock, the butcher’s 
eldest son, who was going round for orders, had 
seen the little rascal do it, and had first given 
bim something at once, and a little more to hold 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 77 


over and think about, and had then made him 
go on the ice and fetch off the obstacle himself. 
He was inclined to believe, the butler added, that 
providence looked after even such little matters as 
these a good deal more than we knew of. 

And here the butler shook his head episcopally. 
Why is it that bishops when out of their robes 
should so often look like butlers? and why a 
butler should so often look like a bishop of the old 
school, with strong leanings towards Greek plays 
on the one hand and port wine on the other, no 
one seems ever to have been able to determine. 
But the fact is the same, whether solved or 
not. 

Here was news. How far was it to the pond ? 
About three minutes’ walk. On went Philip’s hat, 
and away he started for the mere in question, first 
taking the precaution to leave his watch on the 
mantelpiece, and provide himself with a stout staff 
or, to be exact, a. clothes prop. He also hunted up 
in the garden house an iron instrument used at 
the end of a string by gardeners when they want 
to run a straight line, but which has no name 
known to myself, and a serviceable hammer. 

He ventured on the ice holding his quarterstaff 
athw^art him, and found it bear; he jumped and it 
bore — this was pretty good; he Jumped violently. 
Hardly more was needed except to drive a waggon 


78 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


and four over the pool. Being a prudent young 
man, however, with, as I think I have before said, 
an innate love of woodcraft, he completed his survey 
by cutting a sample out of the frozen surface with 
his hammer and impromptu chisel. With this he 
returned in triumph to the house, and the block of 
ice was, after consultation with the butler, placed 
on a big dish of snow and salt, then appropriately 
decorated with sprigs of evergreen, then covered 
with a glass shade, and so placed on the breakfast- 
table, as proof positive that the stoutest person in 
the house might go sliding in safety. 

Seeing is believing, and when the company 
assembled there was no longer speculation as to 
whether the ice would bear. The sample might, 
for all practical purposes, have come from Lake 
Wenham, and have been a four-foot cube. 

So, the meal ended, all was bustle. Those who 
had skates hurried to look them up and get them 
ground; those who had not telegraphed home for 
them, and down to the ice everybody went. 

It was a lovely piece of water, with abundance 
of room, and, but for the absence of flowers and 
bunting and canvas, the scene immediately assumed 
the appearance of an agricultural show. The 
greatest happiness of the greatest number was 
secured, for every pair of skates was utilized, the 
small-footed men cheerfully surrendering their 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


79 


personal pleasure to the ladies, while sledges were 
extemporized, and in one corner the ice was 
carefully swept and a couple of tennis courts 
were erected. 

Miss Keane happened to skate remarkably well. 
Many ladies do where they have the command of 
private, or practically private, water. This is diffi- 
cult to get in the country, unless you own a park 
or know somebody who owns a park ; but in 
London there is (no 'Arry, not ’appy ’Endon ; no, 
nor ’Yde Park neither, nor yet the “ Regency,” 
although you’re getting near it, 'Arry, and although 
the “Regency” is a fine body of water) at least the 
handsome piece of water in the Botanical Gardens; 
and, within accessible range by quick trains, to 
those who care to devote a day to their amuse- 
ment, the ponds in the royal parks at Hampton 
and Windsor. 

Some women do not take to skating, and for 
this , there are more reasons than one. Some are 
physically unfit for it ; others have, or are afraid 
they have, ugly feet and ankles. They should 
recollect that when you are on the ice jmu do not 
look at your neighbour’s feet, nor does your neigh- 
bour look at yours, and also that all feet look big 
when they are enveloped in a mass of straps, 
exactly as an officer of the Household Brigade, 
by no means a Hercules in himself, looks a terrific 


8o YOUNG MR. AINSLIES COURTSHIP. 


fellow in his helmet, cuirass, boots, spurs, and 
uniform. 

Miss Keane, however, had not entered into any 
of these considerations. When she was a child she 
had been taken to see the ice and the people on it. 
When she got older she had been allowed to go 
upon it for her first year and feel her feet. The 
next year miniature skates were procured, and she 
could execute the outside edge before the thaw set 
in. Any healthy English girl with the same oppor- 
tunities could have done as much. Skating is 
like all the enjoyable exercises of this life, chief 
among which I would rank swimming, riding, 
skating, and (with adventitious appliances) cricket, 
and all games with ball — including that most 
dangerous one with the three ivory balls — rowing, 
and, out of respect to those who amuse others as 
well as themselves, I will add the piano and the 
violin — an art only to be acquired when young. 

There is an age at which, although the prime 
of life is yet far off, the joints begin to get stiff. 
No man could ever yet waltz unless he had learnt 
the trick of it before he left school. It is when the 
joints have become stiff that a man is, or ought to 
be, at his best and strongest, and in that fact must 
he seek his consolation if his physical education, 
or what may be called the extras of it, have been 
neglected in his youth. I wonder how many 


YOUNG MR, A INS LIE'S COURTSHIP, 8i 


English gentlemen know how to fight. It is idle 
to say that they do not want to fight, for there 
must be occasions in every man’s life when it is 
desirable that he should either put a stop to some- 
body who attempts to assault him, or should himself 
assault somebody who deserves it. 

Of course Philip was soon at Miss Keane’s side, 
and of course the conversation was of skating, and 
of everything incidental to it. Philip, when Miss 
Keane asked him if he could do the outside edge 
backwards, was straightforward, and said that he 
had never tried, and so was sure he could not. 

Philip, as a matter of fact, took the same vivid 
interest in skating as in all other sports and 
exercises. He was able to tell his companion how 
in England, before skates were known, the citizens of 
London used, according to their chroniclers, to bind 
the thighbones of sheep under the soles of their 
feet, and so skim over the ice with incredible swift- 
ness, the steel blade being a comparatively modern 
invention. 

Then he expounded to her the nature of snow- 
shoes, of which he had a pair, and could use them, 
although opportunity of doing so is rare in England. 
Then he made her laugh with his account of the 
manner in which the Dutch in winter practically do 
everything on skates. 

A man in good health, as Oliver Wendell Holmes 

6 


82 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 


points out, can of course walk and run. If he 
cannot ride or swim he learns to do so on the 
first opportunity and in the face of any difficulties 
or discomforts; and the one object of his ambition, 
if he has leisure for an ambition and a sufficient 
physical physique to allow of a physical ambition 
as well as an intellectual one, would be, if the thing 
were within the range of even reasonable hope, to 
fly. He points out how we all like anything that 
adds to our faculties. A light boat with long oars 
enables us to glide over the water almost as fast as 
a horse can trot. Every man who can row takes 
a conscious pride and pleasure in sculling in one of 
those fragile arrow-shaped machines which consist 
of matchwood, cedar, and canvas, stretched on a 
framework of the lightest Norwegian pine. Or, to 
take one example for all, look at the marvellous 
hold that bicycling at once took upon our young 
men in all ranks and conditions of life, the obvious 
reason being that the bicyclist can for any distance 
keep pace with any coach or carriage, and, in fact, 
outstrip it, which no pedestrian can do or ever 
hope to do. 

In conversation one thing leads to another, and 
Philip at last found that they were talking about 
England. 

“Who was it, Mr. Ainslie,*' asked Miss Keane, 
“who said that the English were the most dissatis- 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 83 


fied race on the earth ; that they were, for instance, 
always grumbling at the climate, and that yet 
England is admittedly the country in which you 
can comfortably pass the greatest number of days 
in the open air ? ” 

“ I am ashamed to say,” answered Philip, “ that 
I do not know who he may be or have been. But I 
am pretty sure he is right. Our climate is perfec- 
tion. The objection to it is that it is so uncertain. 
For instance, you start out fishing at eight with 
a fly-book filled by yourself to suit the day. 
Long before it is twelve you must either give up 
fishing or send home for a couple of dozen other 
flies. For fishers are not pedants. Miss Keane, 
and do not make a mystery out of nothing. They 
cannot tell you why you want a red dun this 
day, or a * coachman’ on another, and a black gnat 
on the third. They know nothing of all these 
things, but they do know, by a sort of instinct, 
what flies to use, just as you can tell whether a 
horse is a kicker when you have been on his back 
a few minutes, although he may not even have 
fidgeted with his hind feet.” 

And this led Philip, to Miss Keane’s relief, into a 
digression on the relative disadvantages of kicking, 
rearing, buck-jumping, and rolling, considered as 
troublesome, if not indeed dangerous, forms of equine 
natural sin — subjects which Florence thoroughly 


84 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE' S COURTSHIP. 


understood, being more of a Diana Vernon than 
was generally supposed. 

Skating would be a far more delightful enjoy- 
ment than it is if you could get more of it than 
you do. There was a great philosopher and man 
of letters who once said that “not being a duke he 
had never been able to obtain, at one sitting, as 
many hot-house peaches as he could have wished.” 
An Englishman does not get, or certainly has 
not got of late years, his reasonable allowance of 
frost. This may be the better for the country, 
but it is certainly the worse, so far as his enjoy- 
ment is concerned, for the individual. 

And yet, on the other hand, the world would be 
very dull if we all had the same tastes. It would 
be intolerable if we all preferred the same authors 
and the same portions of their works, the same 
musicians, and the same artists. Half of the work 
and half of the enjoyment of life would be gone 
if we were agreed in theology, ethics, and politics. 
For life is made up of contrasts, of light and of 
shadow, and if two men have exactly identical 
tastes, and hold exactly identical opinions, they 
will, at the end of a couple of days, each find the 
society of the other absolutely intolerable. 

But two people need not both like billiards, or 
skating, or dancing, or archery, or any of the dozen 
other pursuits i to be accidentally or otherwise 


YOUNG MR. A IN S LIE COURTSHIP. 85 


thrown together at some one or other of those 
pursuits, and it is the contact, and not the occa- 
sion of it, that is the important matter. Any 
spark of fire will ‘^send off” or explode gunpow- 
der, and the moral is to keep your gunpowder 
in magazines. 

We cannot have separate magazines for young 
people of infiammable age and opposite sex, and 
immure them therein until they have attained 
years of stolidity. It would be to lock up all 
young people, because all young people are foolish. 
They would resent it as much as a gentleman of 
some sixty summers would resent the proposal that 
he should retire into private life altogether, or else 
be compelled to do so with a few occasional ex- 
ceptions, such as being taken for a treat to hear 
a speech by Mr. Gladstone, or to see Mr. Irving 
in a new piece, or to vote, — if it be the way his 
wife wishes, — or to take the family to the county 
flower show, or to otherwise do some act which 

is part of his duty to his country and his 

heart. 

Most young people in these days can be trusted 
very safely to take care of themselves. It is seldom 
indeed that a young lady makes an imprudent 

match. She will flirt with the curate (who lives 

on his stipend and five pounds a quarter from his 
great-aunt), whose income she knows pretty well 


86 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE S COURTSHIP, 


to a pound, but she holds his fit matrimonial selec- 
tion in life to be the governess, or a desirable 
middle-class widow with money put by, for it 
would not do for the Church of England that one 
who has served in its ministry should go nearer 
than this to serving behind the counter. There 
are rules in society, and by no one are they so 
thoroughly understood as by young ladies, for whom 
indeed they are practically the Articles of War 
and the last issue of the Rules and Regulations 

o 

knocked into one. 


CHAPTER X. 



HILIP next morning was up early, determined 


on that occasion at any rate to " scorn 
delights and lead laborious days.” He kept his 
intention to himself, except from his host, to whom 
he explained that no man in his senses would go 
out snap-shooting with any fellow. You want all 
your wits for the work itself, and in snap-shooting 
most certainly one is company where two are none 
or worse than none. Such is human selfishness, 
but the fact remains. 

He returned from his solitary expedition with a 
very good bag, for which he would frankly have 
told you he was much indebted to a very trusty 
old water- spaniel, whose judgment within its own 
domain was fully equal to that of the bench of 
bishops within their own domain, whatever that 
may be. 

It was a very pretty little bag indeed. There 
were snipe, and actually a brace of jack snipe, any 
amount of waders, driven inland by the weather, 
and of rare kinds not known to the many, such. 


88 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


for instance, as a curlew, forced inland from the 
salt marshes, a lot of little sandpipers, a bar- tailed 
godwit, a dotterel, and one genuine curiosity which 
was sent up to London at once for taxidermy : a 
stilt, with its immense legs and neck and little 
body, one of Nature’s freaks, like the garfish and 
the hermit crab. 

Next day he hit on a bright idea. He com- 
municated it to no one, because it struck him as 
being too uncommonly good and novel not to be 
kept a secret until it should burst in the midst 
of the company like a bomb-shell. He wrote a 
letter and despatched it up to town by the guard 
of the train, with a smart douceur for delivery 
more prompt than that of the post. It was to 
requisition a carriage-maker whom he knew very 
well for a sleigh which would hold four, with 
orthodox furs — not sable-tail, nor silver-fox, but 
good substantial bear and buffalo from the sleigh 
country — and harnessed with bells. Then, as the 
scene of his enjoyment was not to be the Prater 
at Vienna, or the Bois de Boulogne, or Rotten 
Row, he with very little trouble managed to secure 
in the market town a couple of serviceable cobs, 
and he waited for the collective ariival in patience, 
their destination, by order, being the village inn. 

Even when people came down to breakfast he 
said nothing until the next day, and managed to 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIR’S COURTSHIP. 89 


keep his secret perfectly, so that on the night of 
the arrival no one at Isle worth Park knew that 
there was a sleigh within fifty miles of the place. 
It may be doubted if any one except Captain 
Alacpherson, of the 200th Highlanders, whose 
native home was up in far Sutherlandshire, and 
who had just returned from duty in Canada, had 
ever so much as seen a sleigh, or had anything 
more than the vaguest idea of what a sleigh might 
be. You might as well have asked any of the 
guests oflfhand to give you the difterence between 
a barque, a barquantine, and a three-masted 
schooner, a task which would puzzle many men 
who have been at sea all their lives. 

Next morning, Philip announced with real and 
quiet modesty that he had got down his sleigh — 
he did not, of course, wish them to think he had 
done the thing out of swagger — as he was certain 
that the weather would hold, and better weather 
for sleighing there could not be. Then came the 
question of who should make the first jpartie carrde. 
Mrs. Endesleigh was of course asked, and said 
that she would be delighted, and Philip, with a 
naivetd that really did him infinite credit, said, 
‘‘You were talking to me about sleighing, you 
remember, last night. Miss Keane, and you were 
saying that several gentlemen from New York and 
some from Eussia who had dined at your father’s 


90 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE' S COURTSHIP. 


house had talked about it, and you had all been 
unanimous that sleighing in winter took the place 
of four-in-hand in summer, and was equally anima- 
ting and delightful. I hope you will come.” To 
which suggestion Miss Keane murmured a blushing 
assent. 

“I really do not know any other lady who cares 
for sleighiog,” said Philip to his hostess. ‘^May I 
leave it to you to fill the fourth place ? ” 

“ Oh, yes,” she answered. I think I can find 
some young athlete who is not afraid of a tumble 
into a snow-drift, which is never a dignified per- 
formance, but from which somehow even the victim 
himself seems to derive as much enjoyment as an 
imp .of a lower- third boy at a public school.” 

Her selection fell on a young lady who, to tell 
the truth, had not yet attained the full dignity of 
long skirts, and by choosing whom no reason- 
able offence could possibly be given to any of the 
elder cousins of the choir. The English are really 
not bad diplomatists when they give their mind 
to it. 

It was not long before the sleigh came round. 
Philip had never driven a sleigh in his life, but he 
felt quiet confidence. “ The principle is the same,” 
he said resolutely to himself. “ It must be. It’s 
tweedledum and tweedledee, or puzzling yourself 
whether you are fit to take your place on the 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 91 


bridge of a paddle-wheel when you have been com- 
manding a screw in all kinds of weathers for four 
or five years.’’ Besides, in his own mind he was 
in accord with Mrs. Endesleigh, knowing perfectly 
well that if he spilt his passengers, he could not 
possibly hurt them, unless out of deliberate wanton- 
ness he drove them into a ditch or a roadside heap 
of granite. So he squared his shoulders like a 
man, took the reins in the most approved style, and 
off they dashed. 

All three of his guests — for so I might fairly 
call them — were delighted. There is something 
peculiarly exhilarating in the motion of a sleigh, 
and people who are fond of sleighing, as almost 
all are who have ever tried it, are very fond of 
it indeed. It is, in its way, I really believe, more 
fascinating to its votaries than is even cricket, or 
^'our national game of baseball,” as the Americans 
call their popular pastime. 

They silently glided over the almost frozen 
surface with marvellous quickness, and without a 
jerk, vibration, or oscillation. You could have 
taken a pile of two or three pounds in silver and 
held it out with impunity at arm’s length in the 
palm of your open hand, but the enjoyment of the 
thing lay in the rapid passage through the sharp, 
fresh air without jolt or even perceptible tremor. 
At first there seemed something absolutely uncanny 


92 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


in it. You are making your way along a road at 
a tremendous rate, and, from mere force of habit, 
you expect a certain amount of jolting, and, as 
I have said, you get none. The mere novelty of 
this would be delightful to anybody. A new 
sensation, whether simple or complex, is always 
worth the trouble it costs to procure, and sleigh- 
ing, for those to whom it is genuinely new, is a 
thing as strange, and almost as bewildering, as 
ballooning. 

“ And,” interrupts with her twitter, with her 
shrill twitter, a spectacled, close-cropped Girton 
graduate, “ what is there peculiar about ballooning ? 
Or wherein does a man in a balloon differ much 
from a man looking out of a top window, or from 
the Eiffel Tower, except that he is higher up and 
so has a better view ? Does not the law of 
gravitation prevail in each case ? ” 

Precisely so, my dear young-lady graduate, whom 
I address with a respect almost amounting to terror 
through your college gates. The entire difference 
of ballooning from every other form of motion is 
its only charm. Let me try and give you some 
idea of it. 

When you are once up in a balloon, you have 
absolutely no giddiness. The man who would turn 
giddy looking over the cliffs at Dover or even 
Brighton will as calmly put his hands in his 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


93 


pockets and look over the rim of the car as if he 
were looking out of his bedroom window into 
the garden; surely this is novel and curious enough 
for anybody. 

Have you ever noticed how, when you are 
travelling by train, the whole country seems to be 
rotating round you in a great circle of which 
you are the centre ? Now, in a balloon the country 
does the same, only much more rapidly, as the 
balloon spins on its owm axis at a considerable 
rate, although somehow or other it does not puzzle 
you at all to find, as a rustic would say, “ things 
a-going round and round.” And yet, in a very 
few minutes, the landscape is practically fixed 
for you ; and you can turn to any point in it 
without hesitation or difliculty. 

Philip had, as I have said, almost every — indeed, 
I might very fairly have said every — manly 
accomplishment. The ordinary ABC of an athletic 
education — cricket, swimming, and so on — he 
possessed, of course, as, with very rare exceptions, 
does every English gentleman. But he had also 
general gifts which stood him in such good stead 
that he could pick up, as it were, the way oi 
actually doing a thing, while other men did not 
even see how it was to be done. I believe if he 
had been put to the pique he would have been, 
m a very few days of attempt and practice, com- 


94 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 


petent to perform on the high trapeze. He was 
no Milo of Croton, to knock an ox down with 
his list and then eat him at a meal, but he was 
a tall, well-built young Englishman, who had 
always lived cleanly, soberly, and temperately, who, 
except at meals, very rarely drank anything 
stronger than water, and who, to use a phrase 
well known among athletes, was always in half- 
training. 

Thus, then, he could do most things well and 
make a sufficiently successful shot at the rest, so 
that, although he had never before found himself 
on the whip cushions of a sleigh, he yet, with 
the smallest possible assumption of side, managed 
to give an idea that he had been sleighing every 
winter of his life, and when the party returned to 
the house, the three ladies could do nothing but 
talk about Mr. Ainslie and his sleigh and its dear 
little pair of horses, and how you glided over the 
snow without a jolt, and how you came back quite 
exhilarated, you know, and how the horses tossed 
their heads and shook their bells, as if they enjoyed 
the sport, and so on — possibly all mere gush, but 
sufficiently descriptive. 

With the judicious view of saving himself trouble 
and little personal difficulties, Philip told his hostess 
that he intended to get his hand thoroughly in 
while the snow lasted, and that he should sleigh 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 95 


every morning after breakfast and every afternoon 
after lunch, but that he should leave the filling 
up of the seats to her, and should each turn-out 
present himself at the hall door to take the three 
such ladies as he might find there. 


CHAPTER XL 


^HE frost, like all things else, except perhaps 



the Matterhorn, and the Pyramids with the 
Sphinx, and the Constitution of the United States, 
began to show unmistakable signs of breaking up. 
The trees dripped ; the ground was everywhere 
from an inch to three inches deep in slush of nlud 
and melted snow. 

On the river great “ chunks ” kept rising to the 
surface with gravel and water-weed and other 
scour from the bottom embedded in them, until 
a freshet came from the hills and swept every- 
thing down to the sea before it. The icicles, after 
dripping vigorously, began to drop bodily, like a 
bunch of grapes the stem of which has unhappily 
had its whole weight thrown upon a thin wire. A 
country house under such ciroum.stances is a delu- 
sion and a snare ; and thus it becomes both a 
pleasure for you to go, and a pleasure for your 
host and hostess to bid you farewell with the 
amount of au revoirs proportionate to the friendship 
they entertain for you. 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 97 


So the big party melted away very much 
after the fashion of the snow in the midst of 
which it had been held, and Philip, with a feeling 
which, to some extent, was one of relief, took his 
way home. He asked, and of course obtained, 
permission to leave his sleigh for a while, till he 
had decided what to do with it ; the cobs he 
returned to their owner. 

Departures somehow are almost always formal, 
or, if not formal, at any rate devoid of any show 
of sentiment. I am talking of course of us English. 
If a Frenchman’s eighteenth cousin has to go from 
Toulouse to Algiers, that Frenchman will rend his 
hair and tear his beard, and call on all the saints 
in the calendar, as if the voyage were one round 
Cape Horn or to Spitzbergen, while an Englishman 
will see his only son off to the Gold Coast or to 
Central Tartary as composedly as if he were going 
to Bordeaux to engineer out a little transaction 
in eggs, or wine, or early tomatoes, or 
peaches. 

Philip had no opportunity for anything like 
such leave-taking with Miss Keane as he could 
have wished, for he had begun to entertain some- 
thing a good deal more than a passing fancy 
for that young lady, but he managed to secure 
what was practically enough for his purpose. 

^ I am sorry we are separating so soon, Mr. 

7 


98 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 


Ainslie. You have been the life and soul of the 
place here. Without you we women at all events 
should have been as dull as ditch water. I do 
hope we shall meet again soon. You don’t often 
come to London, do you ? ” 

Philip replied with schoolboy frankness that he 
had never been in the great metropolis in his life, 
except when he came up four consecutive years to 
row in the University Boat Race, returning to 
Cambridge the day after the race. London, he 
said, was at present a terra incognita to him, and 
he was quite certain that he should never like it. 

“ But was there nothing in London that pleased 
you, Ainslie?” 

“ Oh dear yes ! a great many things. But still 
I pn fer the country.” 

“ I am devoted to London,” said Miss Keane, 
“and, what is more, I like its outskirts. Parisians 
may say what they like about the Palais Royal, 
and the Bois de Boulogne, and the Invalides with 
its glaring golden dome, but I think Richmond 
Hill, and the view from it, and a drive through 
Richmond Park worth the Bois de Boulogne ten 
times over. The Invalides has, no doubt, the 
disadvantage of being new, and of having been 
erected in an age when the public taste, like 
everything else, was thoroughly degraded. There 
is a certain barbaric magnificence about it, I 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 99 


daresay, but the eye can never rest upon it 
tenderly, nor, on the other hand, admiringly, for 
its grandeur, like its dome, is pinchbeck. It will 
not bear comparison with dear old Chelsea. The 
Palais Royal, I admit, I like very much. The 
mingling of old associations, of crowned heads 
and courtiers, and the mob of sans-culottesy floods 
upon you. If you can only realize for a moment 
that this was the palace of the great house of 
Bourbon, the little Lowther and Burlington Arcade- 
like shops, with their cheap merchandise, seem 
to fade away, and for a minute or two, just a 
minute or two, you see the place as it once was.” 

“ I have never been to Paris, Miss Keane, but 
1 can fully appreciate what you say.” 

“ You vegetate a great deal too much, Mr. 
Ainslie, if you won’t think me very rude for saying 
so. To me it is marvellous that a man possessing 
health and strength and sulBcient resources, and 
what is more, having his time at his own disposal, 
should coop himself up from one year’s end to the 
other in a country village.” 

“ I have always longed to get away,” answered 
Philip, “but circumstances have hitherto prevented 
me.^’ 

“Oh, yes, I quite understand what you mean, but 
surely your mother would spare you for a 
short trip in Europe. You have told me how 


100 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


terrified she is at the prospect of your taking 
one of those long voyages you have so much at 
heart.” 

"I daresay everything will come in good time. 
But tell me some more about Paris. It interests 
me very much.” 

**Well, if I found myself again in Paris to- 
morrow, and the day was fine, I should not 
devote it to the endless boulevards or the Rue 
de la Paix, with their oppressively extensive shops, 
but I should stroll down to the Palais Royal 
and saunter about it, and visit Notre Dame, the 
finest building I know — far beyond Westminster 
Abbey or Canterbury Cathedral. The cathedrals 
at Cologne and Strasbourg and the Kremlin at 
Moscow I have not yet seen, except in photographs. 
But N6tre Dame is, if I may aid my poor judgment 
by photographs, the most beautiful of them all.” 

"I am not learned in architecture, Miss Keane, 
and indeed hardly know one style of it from 
another, except that our own parish church is 
Norman, and that the new church in the next 
parish is Gothic.” 

‘*And of course you prefer the modern Gothic, 
Mr. Ainslie, darting its spires to heaven like the 
flames of tapers, or, as some poet has said, ‘ rising 
in a fount to heaven like frozen music ’ ? ” 

** I can’t say I do, Miss Keane. I like the 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. loi 


Norman. It seems to me that there is something 
solid and in grim earnest about it; that it was 
not so much built to please the eye as to express 
a hidden meaning. Have you read Browning’s 
‘Childe Boland’?” 

" I have read it, but I don’t understand it, 
and I don’t profess for a moment to understand 
Norman architecture. In fact, I heartily dislike it. 
It seems to hide under those beetled semi-circular 
arches and behind those great thick walls some 
horrible secret. There is brutality and cruelty 
apparent in it, but nothing like life or beauty. 
We all know that the Italian is really the only 
style for a gentleman’s house, whether it be in 
the country or in the town, and that the Italian 
villa in the Paladiate style is the country house 
par* excellence, both for comfort and for appearance. 
But you seem sad, Mr. Ainslie, and you talk in 
enigmas. I like neither of these things. Tell me 
of something of which you know, and about which 
you care to talk. I don’t mind what it is. You 
like sport best, don’t you ? I have seen most forms 
of country sport, for I live at least a third of the 
year in the country, not being quite so tied by 
the Bank as papa is.” 

“I won’t tell you of any books I have read. 
Miss Keane, for they have nearly all been books 
of travel, and as one reads them they come and 


102 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


go, so that I could hardly tell you of them if I 
would. What they leave is a very strong general 
impression. I know Bechuanaland as well as if I 
had been there, unless the books lie. But I don’t 
want to be always giving you secondhand knowledge 
— yesterday’s cabbage warmed up, as the Roman 
satirist calls it. Let me tell you of some out-of- 
the-way English sports. Now I presume you have 
never assisted at the solemn ceremony of unearthing 
a badger?” 

Miss Keane admitted this defect in her educa- 
tion with becoming humility. 

You have never followed an old dog otter 
all day and seen him rolled over, or even enjoyed 
the glory of tailing him yourself on a good dry 
bed of gravel ? ” 

Of course, Mr. Ainslie, I have done none of 
these things, nor seen them.” 

“Then pray do not think me a boor because I 
love them. A man need not, I hope, be the less 
a gentleman because, although he knows how to 
use an otter-spear, bring down his bird right and 
left, or lift the hounds at exactly the right moment 
he is utterly ignorant of town life and town manners. 
Now that is just my case. Miss Keane. I do not 
know my Debrett. I could not find my way from 
St. James’s Palace to Cliaring Cross, and 1 have 
never even matriculated by taking a bedroom for 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 103 


the season in one of the streets off St. James’s 
Square, joining a club and riding religiously in the 
Park. I don’t like London, and never shall like it, 
not even when I get old, my eyes dim, my nerve 
fails, and I am unable any longer to ride straight 
to the hounds, but have to look out for the short 
cuts. You will never civilize me. Even when I 
have got on my society warpaint, my one anxiety 
is to wash it off again.” 

“ I reall}^^ believe, Mr. Ainslie, that you are a 
thorough Ishmaelite.” 

“ No, Miss Keane, I am not a descendant of 
Ishmael, for my hand is against no man’s, and 
1 am not aware that any man’s hand is against 
mine, and I am just sufficiently above barbarism 
to like Scott’s novels, and Shakespeare’s plays, 
and Macaulay, who is so fiendishly clever that 
he ought to have been on our side. But I can 
pretty well judge myself, and I think on the 
whole I know about enough to fit me to sit for 
the county, and not enough to qualify me for head- 
master at an ordinary Board school.” 

“ I do not quite understand you, Mr. Ainslie. 
Pray go on. I like to hear you talk." 

“ Suppose, for instance, a Board of Examiners 
sat down and asked me solemnly, ‘ In what dynasty 
did Confucius flourish ? Give the general character 
of his philosophy. What in botany is the difference 


104 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 


between endogens and exogens? To which of the 
two orders belong (1) the beech ; (2) an ear of 
wheat; (3) a bamboo; (4) an oak? Where are 
the ores of antimony found ? What are their 
principal crude impurities ? What are the uses 
of antimony in the arts ? What is its effect upon 
the human system ? How closely are we approxi- 
mated to the transit of Venus ? Why is its exact 
ascertainment of so much importance?’ ‘Well, 
gentlemen/ I should say, ‘ I don’t know, but I am 
sure I should understand you if you try to explain 
it all to me.’ Why, Miss Keane, even the 
Astronomer Royal does not work out his calcula- 
tions himself. He gets some results in very 
abstruse mathematical formulae, and then he sends 
for an Astronomer Royal’s ‘ devil.’ There are one 
or two of these gentlemen who do very useful 
work for a very small amount of salary, and who 
have, of course, a residence at Greenwich, at the 
Observatory itself or in its precincts. Say the 
thing wanted is the exact day and hour at which 
the next transit of Venus is visible and at what 
parts of the earth it will be visible. The Astronomer 
Royal dashes out the few great data and throws 
them to his subordinates, with instructions to bring 
back the answer, worked out to the hundredth 
of a second Greenwich time. The assistant goes 
away and comes back very shortly with his answer, 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 105 


set out as neatly and precisely in writing as if 
he were a Bank clerk and had been asked to 

make out the state of the account of Messrs. Stubbs, 
Davis, Grey and Stubbs, including current cash, 
bills under discount, bills to be collected but not 
yet due, securities held as against current advances, 
and so on. There are some people who can see 
the poetry of this, and after all it is really a 
matter fully as interesting as is the geometry of 
the cell of the bee. But now, Miss Keane, I 

must say good-bye.” 

“ Good-bye. Shall you go home, Mr. Ainslie, or 
come up to this London you dislike so much, or 
go on the Continent, or what ? ” 

certainly shall not go on the Continent. I 
don’t mean to do that for some time yet, and 
I don’t seem to care for going to London all alone. 
As I have told you, it has no great charms for 
me. No, I shall go home, and I shall get down 

my gun, and wake up my old dogs, who must 

have been sadly dull, and I daresay there will be 
a little shooting left. In fact, I am sure there will 
be abundance for me, as I am about the only 
snap shot in the neighbourhood.” 

Miss Keane threw up her hands and asked 
what a snap shot might mean. Was he in any 
way related to a crack shot ? 

“Not exactly,” answered Philip. '*A crack shot 


io6 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^ S COURTSHIP. 


is merely a man who shoots better than others. 
A snap shot is a man who endeavours to bring 
down everything he flushes, from a curlew to a 
jack snipe or from a mallard to a tiny little 
teal.” 

“I suppose you have quite a collection of 
trophies of the chase ? ” 

“Yes, I have a good many,” said Philip. “It is 
not mere vanity that makes sportsmen decorate 
their rooms and corridors with heads and antlers. 
It is the love of the chase itself and the desire to 
be perpetually reminded of it, and I think your 
old fisherman shows that clearly enough, for long 
after the fear of rheumatism has forbidden his 
risking even a cold he keeps his rods and creels 
hung up in his room and his flies and tackle in 
their cabinet, and goes through them all once a 
month to see that they have not become affected 
by mould or rust, and so piously restores them 
to their places.” 

Next day the party broke up. The last of the 
guests left after lunch. Philip, after appropriate 
adieux and expressions of regret, soon found himself 
in the train rapidly rolling homewards. I ought, of 
course, to give his meditations, only that he hadn’t 
any ready at hand, or if he had, did not indulge 
in them. He lit a cigar and smoked ; and when 
his cigar was smoked out, he lit another. 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 107 


Before the second cigar was finished he fell 
asleep, spoiling an excellent cigar, and committing, 
for so strict a young man as himself, an act of 
great extravagance. Finally, he reached home 
where, after greeting his mother, he begged her to 
defer all talk until next day — a very favourite 
method with him of doing business, and by no 
means tending to evade it or delay its completion. 


CHAPTER XIL 



EXT momiDg Philip rose early even for him, 


^ but found, to his astonishment, that his 
mother was down before him. 

Early hours, mother dear!” he said cheerily. 

" Yes, my child. I could not rest. You were 
not in a communicative frame of mind last night, 
and I am dying to hear your news. Now tell me. 
did you really enjoy yourself?” 

“ Immensely,” answered Philip. In fact, if I 
hadn’t amused myself, I certainly should not have 
stopped so long. But everybody was very kind to 
me, and I don’t think that I ever had better fun.” 

“Well, let’s come to breakfast, and then you can 
tell me all about it.” 

“I don’t think there’s anything very startling to 
tell,” said Philip. “We shot and hunted, and then 
I got down a sleigh, and we went out sleighing. 
All the ladies liked that.” 

“ What ladies were there ? ” 

“ Oh ! their name was legion ; however, there was 
only one that I particularly cared about.” 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 109 


“ And who was that ? ” asked his mother sharply. 

“A Miss Keane — Florence Keane, a most charm- 
ing girl, very pretty, very clever, and to my 
mind very sympathetic.” 

“You are unusually enthusiastic about this young 
lady, Philip. May I ask who she is?” 

“Of course you may, mother. She is the daughter 
of a rich London banker. I don’t suppose I shall 
ever see her again. She and her father were 
staying at the Endesleighs’, and both of them 
were very civil to me.” 

“Perhaps there was a little more than civility 
between you and Miss Keane,” said Mrs. Ainslie, 
altering her tone, and with fears allayed, at the 
mention of Mr. Keane’s wealth and position. 

“No, I don’t think there was,” replied Philip. 
“We were very confidential, and that was all.” 

“ Well, what did you confide about ? You tell 
me nothing, Philip.” 

“Perhaps because there’s nothing to tell. Well, 
we discussed sport. Miss Keane likes sport, and 
rides to hounds magnificently. And then we talked 
of London and London life.” 

“ But you know nothing of London life.” 

“ You are quite right, mother. But we talked of 
it all the same. Then Miss Keane told me what 
she thought of Paris, and I explained to her how 
to get a really good fish dinner.” 


no 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIR'S COURTSHIP, 


Young girls don’t care to hear of things of 
that sort, Philip.” 

“ Don’t they ? You see, I don’t know much about 
them. Anyhow I think Miss Keane liked talking 
to me, and I am quite sure I liked being with her.” 

“ I really believe you are in love, Philip.” 

“ I can’t say much about love. I like Miss 
Keane very much.” 

“Didn’t you tell her so?” 

“No, mother.” 

“I can’t understand young men of the present 
day. When I was a girl, things seemed to be 
managed differently. I had five offers within a 
month after I came out, and three out of the five 
vowed they would commit suicide.” 

“ That was the nonsense of those days, mother — 
the days of Clapham boarding-schools and select 
academies for young ladies, when to play ‘ The 
Battle of Prague ’ was the limit of a lady’s musical 
education, while her general information was derived 
from Mangnall’s questions, which I think you, 
dear, made terrible attempts to drill into myself, 
but which I have always found as ..repulsive as 
Scotchmen freely admit the Shorter Catechism is. 
I believe that at sight of the Longer Catechism 
even a Scotchman himself will turn and run with 
a howl resembling the screed of a bagpipe in its 
expiring agonies.” 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, in 


“You need not run down the education we 
received, Philip. It was a very good one. We 
were taught to fear God, and honour the king, 
and obey our parents and all who might be set 
in authority over us, and to do our duty, and 
not to get thinking too much of ourselves, for we 
were warned against getting puffed up. Why, if 
a young man of five-and-twenty in those times 
had ventured to stand in the middle of the hearth- 
rug with his back to the fire, he would have been 
brought to his senses in a minute by the eldest 
gentleman present. I remember seeing that once 
myself. A young man was standing exactly as I 
have said, and he was keeping all the fire from 
the company. There was a very old gentleman in 
the ring round the hearth, who said very mildly 
to him, ‘Are you fond of roast puppy, my dear 
sir ? * The young man started, for he saw he had 
his work cut out. ‘I don’t know what you mean, 
sir,’ he answered, in the tone of a man trying to 
pick a quarrel. ‘I have never tasted roast puppy, 
or even heard of it.’ ‘ Well, then, my dear sir/ 
replied tjie ^old gentleman, still speaking in the 
mildest of toqes, ‘ I have seen it to-night, and have 
smelt i^ roasting. The look of it is not very 
much, but the smell goes beyond human patience. 
So, if you will just kindly— there need not be 
any unpleasantness, for I am sure you will take 


12 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 


what I say in friendly part — defer the remainder of 
this business of roasting yourself until to-morrow, 
we shall all get on cheerfully together.’ Well, my 
dear boy, I never saw a young man so confused. 
He came off the rug altogether, with his face full 
of silly spite, and took himself right outside our 
ring, where he sulked for the rest of the evening. 
He was a foolish fellow, like all selfish people are. He 
could so easily have passed the thing off’ as a joke.” 

Then Mrs. Ainslie turned the conversation back 
to Miss Keane. But Philip had very little more to 
tell his mother with regard to that young lady. 
Mrs. Ainslie at last came to the conclusion that 
Philip had had a great chance, but had mis- 
managed matters wofully. Her doubts on this 
score were, however, easily dispelled next day by 
a letter from old Mr. Keane, which her son showed 
her after he had first hurried through it himself. 

“ 99a, Geosvenob Square, Pel, 18 — , 

“My dear Mr. Ainslie, — 

** We had all of us, I think, a very pleasant 
and happy time of it down at Isleworth. Will you 
now give us the pleasure of coming to stop with 
us a bit in London ? I can offer you a hearty 
welcome. Pray do not mind my assuring you with 
the same frankness as if we were beating down 
a long stubble together that both I and my 
daughter shall be very glad to see you. 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 113 


But you come upon one condition only — a 
condition we impose upon all our visitors — you are 
to be absolutely your own master from morning to 
night. The more we see of you, of course all the 
happier we shall be. 

“ Most truly yours, 

“Stephen Keane.” 


“ Well, mother, I never can be dishonest, and 
least of all with you. I should like to go very 
much. But it does look unkind, and it feels 
unkind, which is more, to be always running away 
from you in this manner.” 

Mrs. Ainslie interrupted her son impatiently. 
“What nonsense, Philip dear I What very mala- 
droit compliments you pay me ! Of course I like 
to have you with me. Just twist the dish round, 
it is only another way of saying that I like to be 
with yon. That is fair and reasonable enough. 
But I am not so foolish as to want to have you 
trotting by my side or seated at the stool at my 
feet all the d^ long, and to put you into your 
little bed myself every night, and hush you to 
sleep, and leave .you with three sweets in a whitey- 
brown paper under your pillow. We are past all 
that, you and I, my dear boy. But we need not 
love one another any the less, and I am sure that 
we do not.” 


8 


1 14 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^ S COURTSHIP, 


Philip’s only answer was a pressure of his 
mother’s hand. 

“Now go up to town, my boy. You will please 
me best by doing so; and I will give you a list 
of things I want, which you can buy for me and 
send down the first wet morning that keeps the 
household indoors, or whenever you have an hour 
to spare. You will be startled, I am afraid, when 
you see my list. And so you see, dear, this invi- 
tation comes most happily. It will put my house- 
keeping affairs all right for six months to come, 
and it will give you just the holiday you deserve, 
and which will do you good. How funny these 
little things are ! Old General Raven called the 
other day while you were at Isleworth, and I 
asked him of course, as he comes eleven miles, if he 
would not stay to lunch. He said he would, and 
I ran down to get him what I know he likes: 
some Bengal curried prawns. Would you believe 
it, my dear, there was not one in the jar ! and 
when, in despair, I looked for the Tirhoot Chutnee, 
it was ‘out.’ And Providence did not favour me, 
Philip, for when 1 came to look, I could not even 
produce a devilled anchovy on toast or potted 
caviare with the appropriate adjuncts of brown 
bread and butter, lemon and cayenne pepper. 
Wasn’t it dreadful ! So now, Philip dear, you must 
go to town for my sake as well as your own, and 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 115 


in the character of a bagman, or, as I believe they 
now call themselves, commercial gentleman. And 
— I am sure you did not know I understood so 
much business — if you will carry these transactions 
through to my satisfaction, you shall have a 
thumping commission on the present negotiations, 
and an assurance of my esteemed patronage for 
the future.” 

Philip laughed. “Very well, mother; it shall be 
as you wish. And I won’t for a moment pretend 
that I am not glad to accept the Keanes’ invitation.” 

Thus it fell out that within three days Philip was 
again with the Keanes, and in closer proximity to them 
than ever, being this time under their own roof. 


CHAPTER XIIL 


ND so then Philip found himself launched 



into London life, under the very best con- 
ditions and auspices. It was a new experience, 
and he resolved to make the most of it. 

It was about five when his hansom put him 
down in Grosvenor Square. Mr. Keane had not 
yet returned from the City, but Philip was in- 

formed by the butler that Miss Keane was in the 
drawing-room. So to the drawing-room he re- 

paired, and there he found Florence entertaining 
three or four people with the conventional tea and 
toast and thin bread and butter. 

Philip was of course presented to Miss Keane’s 

friends. One of them. Lady Throwstone, an old 

lady, much interested in ritualistic matters, eyed 
Philip as if he were some wild animal, and hearing 
that he came from the country and had lived in 
it all his life, began to put to him some exceed- 
ingly foolish questions with reference to agricultural 
matters. Her daughter, however. Lady Maria 
Slinger, looked at Philip with undisguised admira- 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S C 0 UR 2 SHIP. 117 


tion, much in the same way as the Roman ladies 
of old regarded the powerful young gladiators and 
muscular athletes when they attended the exhi- 
bitions in the amphitheatre. The third was a 
young Evangelical curate — the Honourable and 
Reverend Sextus Sweetapple — in whose judgment 
Lady Throwstone was as one intimately connected 
with the scarlet woman; and the fourth an aesthetic 
gentleman, who had allowed his hair to grow 
half-way down his back and smelt strongly of 
magnolia, with which he had liberally perfumed 
himself. 

In this strangely mixed company Philip felt 
somewhat like a fish out of water, and he was really 
relieved when Mr. Keane made his appearance. 

Then the tittle-tattle ceased, for Mr. Keane was 
a man of strong common-sense, and had a habit 
of cutting nonsense very short by its root, especi- 
ally when it was being talked for its own sake ; 
and this dictatorial tendency in him was pretty 
well known to those who frequented his house, 
where he took no pains to hide or in any way 
subdue or tone down his own personal peculiarities. 

Having saluted and received salutation all round, 
Mr. Keane began with a remark about the weather. 
It has often been said that the weather is what 
every stupid man talks about. Nothing could be 
more erroneous. The man who talks about the 


ii8 YOUNG MR ATNSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


weather is a wise man if there is anything in the 
weather to give occasion for more than the customary 
condensed summing up of ‘^Fine day!” or Nasty 
day 1 ” each of which means “No occasion to 
talk about the weather, because we'ro agreed upon 
it.” 

Take the returns of the Registrar-General. Out 
of every ten deaths in England, from three to four 
— and nearer four than three — are due tc lung- 
disease of one kind or another, and then the people 
blame us for talking about the weather. Tuey 
might as well blame us for talking about the 
Plague if it had again broken out in London, 
under the administration of the County Council. 

If you realize the fact that far more people die 
of lung disease than of any other given complaint, 
you will understand why a Londoner always 
mentions the weather first and gives his opinion of 
it, unless it is a matter beyond controversy, as when 
not even a cab can get about in December for the 
snow, or when sunstrokes are occurring in the 
streets at the rate of four or five a day in August, 
being registered as heat apoplexy and ascribed by 
the “unco’ guid” to the use of spirits, which is, 
very possibly, sometimes the case. 

Mr. Sweetapple opined that the weather was a 
very mysterious subject. We were told it was in 
the hands of the Lord, who ruled it entirely as 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 119 

He pleased, and we had perhaps been apt to take 
the saying a little too literally, and actually to 
pray for fine weather or for rain. 

^‘And sometimes for both,” interrupted Mr. Keane, 
have heard of an English farmer who, when 
prayers for fine weather were put up, added in an 
audible sotto voce, ‘And let there be as much light 
rain as you please on the fallows and uplands, per- 
viding it shine upon the turnips and bring ’em 
to a good head, wi’out being stringy.’ ” 

The weather having been turned round and con- 
sidered, and speculated upon from all its possible 
aspects, the conversation began to turn upon 
things in general, of which it has been wisely 
observed that there is not much more interest about 
them than there is about things in particular, and 
that the universe could get on very well without- 
them and the flaneurs whose attention and really 
serious study they seem to occupy. 

Then the sesthetic gentleman saw his chance at 
last, and delivered himself of a little lecture on the 
artistic effects of a mezzo-tint, by which he meant 
a slightly smoky atmosphere, dilated on its influence 
in Turner’s pictures, and detailed the impression 
produced upon him by various aspects of slight 
Lomlon fog when he was taking the daily drive 
in a hansom, prescribed him by his physician, 
six times up and down the great riverside terrace 


120 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


in Battersea Park. He was one of those aesthetic 
gentlemen who admire everything, but whose plea- 
sure in their admiration is to analyse its sources, 
and to inflict the analysis in detail upon the 
victims whom they button-hole. 

Lady Maria, who had somehow unconsciously 
gravitated towards Philip, and Philip possibly a 
little bit towards her, began to show unmistakable 
symptoms of boredom, and having at last managed 
by a little mutual manoeuvring to establish herself 
within safe and easy earshot of Philip, remarked to 
him most, unfeigned ly, — 

“ What horrible rot these people talk ! ” 

“ That they do,” replied Philip very emphatically. 

“It would wear the life out of you, Mr. Ainslie, 
if you had to listen to it day after day, knowing 
the particular quack of which each particular goose 
will deliver himself at his own particular moment. 
I had the whole of this yesterday, almost in the 
same words, in Upper Grosvenor Street, and I 
shall probably hear it to-morrow in Harley Street, 
where mamma and I are going to dine. It is the 
boil-down of an article that appeared in Art last 
week. It is only in Paris and in the United States 
that people can talk. The English are as ignorant 
of the ait as they are of waltzing, of cookery, of 
music, of diplomacy, or of anything involving tact 
or fine judgment. Conversation, I think, requires, 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 121 


especially with a stranger, more tact than anything 
else.” 

" I understand in a kind of way what you mean,” 
said Philip. “ If the person to whom you are talking 
would rather you went away and let him alone, 
and sometimes in his exasperation almost lets you 
gather as much, it is clear that you have mistaken 
your occupation in polite society.” 

They both laughed heartily. 

‘‘Ah well,” said Lady Maria, “ there are a great 
many sides to everything, and we do not all want 
to mould our lives in the same fashion.” 

Lady Throwstone at this point raised her voice, 
having somehow become excited, and remarked 
that she, for one, agreed in politics with Dr. Johnson, 
who hated the Whigs, and used to declare at the 
Rainbow and the Mitre and his other favourite 
haunts that the one thing for which he would 
tie a sword about him and go out was the restora- 
tion of Convocation, with all its privileges. 

Philip asked in the simplest manner possible 
whether Convocation had any powers and whether 
it did any more than meet and talk matters over, 
and then pass what he believed was called a 
Gravamen, but which would ordinarily be termed 
a resolution, and so break up. 

Lady Throwstone could give no answer to this 
home-thrust except a series of sniffs and snorts, 


122 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


and their conversation showed symptoms of drop- 
ping out, and did, as a matter of fact, drop out, 
hopelessly exhausted. 

There is an end to all institutions, even to after- 
noon tea, and the callers melted away. Philip was 
beginning to understand what until now he had 
not known : that the rules of life in a town house 
are rather less strict than they are in a house 
in the country, and that you can do much more 
as you please in the former than in the latter 
without being considered in the least degree ill- 
mannered or even uncourteous. 

It was now too late to go out and be back in 
time for dinner, but being at last alone with Mr. 
Keane and Florence, he drew himself up a chair 
on one side of the fire. Miss Keane was seated 
on the other, and her father was boldly erect on the 
rug, with expanded coat-tails, in the truest English 
lashion. 

Now that the callers had left, a heavy weight 
seemed lifted from the minds of the party, and 
they actually fell to talking freely. 

About what they talked, or how, or which side, 
if there were any side to take, each espoused, it 
matters little to say. They drifted down with the 
tide, which is, after all, the pleasantest way of 
talking. Conversation to be pleasant must be 
natural, and it can never be natural if it be pursued 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 123 


with effort, for it is distinctly an amusement, al- 
though an amusement of the very highest order, 
one that may almost be ranked with improvization 
upon the organ, which some maintain is the simplest 
and the highest pleasure in existence, although 
unquestionably one of the most difficult to acquire. 
And in this attitude of mind respectively they 
went to dress for dinner. 


CHAPTEK Xiy. 


HTLTP did not find his fortnight in London 



-L at all dull. I will not take my reader through 
it day by day and stage by stage, after the exact 
but terribly laborious fashion of Dante. On the 
contrary, I shall tell him what I think he ought 
to know with as rapid a pinion as is permitted 
me. His hosts knew well enough that what would 
be new, strange, and pleasant to him were the 
sights with which every Londoner is familiar, or 
ought to be, and with which every educated gentle- 
man, whether specially interested in the subject or 
not, ought to be to a certain extent acquainted; 
perhaps more than to a certain extent, according to 
the bent of his individual fancy. 

Knowing Philips passionate love of country life, 
and indeed of animated nature in any shape, Mr. 
Keane and his daughter, with a thorough but yet 
kindly sense of the fun of his position, took him to 
the Botanical and Zoological Gardens, and to the 
Natural History Galleries at South Kensington. 
Some of these, as has been previously mentioned, he 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 125 


had seen before, as he frankly told his hosts and 
ciceroni^ declaring at the same time that it was 
always worth a journey to London from any part 
of England to see the Zoological Gardens ; that to 
these again he preferred the Botanical; that Kew 
with a ticket to the private hothouses was a thing 
never to be forgotten; that the National Gallery 
he liked, especially the Constables, and the Wilkies, 
and the Turner Gallery, which he could say from 
actual knowledge were marvellously true to nature ; 
in fact, he now more than ever agreed with every 
word of Buskin. 

Philip, as a matter of fact, happened to have 
read every line that Buskin has ever written about 
Turner, and at once said as much, adding, however, 
with pardonable courage, that the judgment was 
his own, and would have been so in any case, 
whatever he might have assumed the opinion of 
his oldest, most esteemed, and best friend was 
going to be. 

I may pass over little matters. I do not wish to 
expatiate on mere ordinary sights of the day, — the 
latest play, the current opera bouffe, the last sermon 
that has tickled semi-intellectual London up into 
a little quiver of its semi-atheism, a sort of doubt 
whether the whole of this, you know, is exactly 
true, although of course, in the bulk it has got to 
be believed in some form or other, metaphorically, 


126 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 


or metaphysically, or doctrinally, or dilutedly, or 
sympathetically, or even, if you please, in its 
grander and more poetical aspects. Such are the 
kind of topics on which Londoners converse, and I 
for one can only hope that the gentle kindly 
exercise somehow comforts them — it certainly seems 
to do so, for they are always at it, as sheep are 
always nibbling at the grass. 

Philip, I must add, that I may not cover canvas, 
however waste, with scenes familiar to all my 
readers, was fairly delighted with everything, but 
with some things more than others, as the bishop 
sternly pointed out when asked by a young curate 
in his diocese what vintage of port wine he 
preferred. Sir,” replied the right reverend prelate 
in his most crushing tone, "‘all port wine is good; 
but God in His infinite mercy to invalids and the 
old — I mean to those who are past the physical 
prime of life — has made some varieties of that 
precious and invaluable wine better than others.” 
So Philip found of the various London pleasures, 
or at any rate of those which he tasted, that all 
were good, but that some were distinctly better 
than others. But he was pleased and satisfied 
with everything. He consequently made the per- 
fection of a guest, and strengthened his already 
sufficiently firm hold upon his hosts. 

About a week after Philip’s arrival there was a 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIKS COURTSHIP 127 


big dinner of state in Grosvenor Square — what may 
be called a financial dinner. There were a few 
ladies, the wives, or, in the absence of the wife, the 
eldest daughter, of City magnates, and of the City 
magnates themselves any number. But as this 
‘‘ stock ” or substratum in the soup was ordinary, 
and wanted rich fiavour and character added to it, 
there was a bishop recently app6inted, also a very 
learned judge, and in addition a gentleman from a 
house in Cheyne Bow which was painted outside 
in all colours of the rainbow, and which inside was 
in the strictest style of the Renaissance, and who 
now and then prattled in the magazines about 
current art in the approved modern fashion. 

Philip took down a young lady whose father was 
something in the City. She was not sufficiently 
vivacious to tell him what, but she had evidently 
been well Girtonised, and consequently, in language 
not permitted at Girton, had a simple rule for all 
matters of doubt and difficulty, which is tn open 
your mouth as little as possible, for fear you should 
put your foot into it. 

Such companions are well enough at a picnic, 
but at dinner they are a downright nuisance. For 
whereas he who talketh at a banquet well doth 
warm your heart, as doth the fire, the heat of 
which filleth the room, so doth the dull or iterative 
companion at the solemn function of the great 


128 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


feast chill your marrow and make you feel beside 
yourself with fear, and unfit to stand as a man 
to your appointed place. 

Philip, while yet in the drawing-room, foresaw his 
ordeal, but determined to face it like a trapper caught 
by a band of Apaches — in silent firmness. A dinner 
by yourself is often very tolerable and comfortable, 
and you can make arrangements for it. So is a 
dinner with a sensible man; but a humble mutton 
chop is worth all the banquets in the world if you 
have to sit by a fool during their consumption. 

The bishop, seeing Philip to be young, evidently 
from the country, and so, of course, a docile, church- 
going-in-his-own-parish young man, who still knew 
his Creed by heart, and had a general remembrance 
of bis Catechism, asked him, after the ladies had 
retired, what he thought of the spread of unbelief, 
and whether it was at this moment as dangerous 
in the country parts as it admittedly and perceptibly 
was in London. 

Philip replied with the most perfect frankness 
that he had not the faintest idea. “And I do not 
believe,” he said, without the least trace of mockery 
or even irony in his tone, “that we have any 
Government statistics on the subject. They do not 
seem to consider it of sufficient importance. Here 
and there some young gentleman of hardly any 
education at all gets hold of works which are being 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 129 


assiduously spread about broadcast, and for the 
publication and dissemination of which men ought 
to be well whipped, like naughty little boys who 
deface walls and otherwise make themselves objec- 
tionable. Tom Paine’s ‘ Age of Reason,’ for 
instance, gets about. It is as blasphemous as it 
can be, as you are, of course, aware, my lord; but 
you can get it anywhere you like for sixpence 
all the same.” 

“I had no idea of this,” interrupted the bishop. 

“It is perfectly true, my lord,” replied Philip 
“Then there is a ruffian in the United States, — a 
colonel, I believe — a Yankee free-thinker, only that 
he has the courage of his convictions, which many 
free-thinkers have not.” 

“A very doubtful courage, I fear,” sighed the bishop. 

Perhaps so,” answered Philip, “but anyhow 
he has it. Then, too, he does not make one penny 
out of his opinions, and when prosecuted for them, 
as he has been over and over again, instead of 
snivelling, and raising miserable quibbles, and shuf- 
fling his arguments from one point to another, has 
at any rate met the charge boldly and defiantly.” 

“ Are you in any profession, Mr. Ainslie ? ” asked 
the bishop, getting interested to find a man so 
young talking easily of matters of which he, the 
bishop, was profoundly ignorant. 

“ No,” said Philip, ** I am not. I had at one time 

0 


130 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE S COURTSHIP. 


thought of reading for the Bar, but I have now 
entirely abandoned all idea of that.” 

“ That seems a pity, does it not ? ” remarked 
his lordship. “The Bar is a noble art — perhaps I 
ought to say profession. I have always ranked it 
as next to medicine. Medicine I place first in the 
beneficent results of its mission. Theology of course 
stands apart from the sciences altogether, whether 
pure as mathematics, or mixed as mathematics in 
its application.” And the bishop expanded his 
chest as if he had said something remarkably 
original and profound. This is a way with bishops, 

Mr. Keane observed drily that in his mind the 
sphere of human knowledge in man, whether 
divinely imparted or self-acquired in the ordinary 
way, was more or less limited. He could only 
learn what he was taught, which did not leave the 
stock of knowledge at large of the world very 
much larger. But for his part he liked young 
men who set to work to pitch straight on new things 
— men like Edison, for instance — and he further 
for one, thought they deserved their luck, and 
envied it them, only not in any mean kind of 
way. He had never yet known a man with the 
cards consistently against him who turned out worth 
anything. A man who is to succeed needn't be all 
sharpness, but he must have a considerable ingre- 
dient of that element in his constitution. Now he 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 131 


had watched Philip, and he believed that if he were 
knocked down out of the skies anywhere, he would 
be in the first iBight before three or four fences were 
passed — Mr. Keane’s metaphors were sometimes a 
trifle mixed — and for that reason, if for no other, he 
liked his company, and hoped they would always 
remain firm friends. 

And these last remarks Mr. Keane with wonderful 
adroitness managed to convey to Philip without 
any other guest overhearing a word, and in a 
manner that boiled over with warm feeling and 
absolute confidence. 

The judge at this period began to think it was 
time to cut in, and he accordingly, as a light and 
pleasing subject of general interest in society, took 
up his parable on the law of contraband. There 
was not a soul in the room, as it happened, with 
the exception of Mr. Keane, who knew a word 
about the subject except the judge himself, although 
Mr. Keane, who happened to be interested in 
Atlantic commerce, knew much more about the 
Alabama and the Trent ^ and the issues involved 
in those matters, together with the subsequent Court 
of Arbitration, as it was called in mockery, than 
nine English practising lawyers out of ten. The 
judge having exhausted the law of contraband turned 
to another subject, and then to a third, and then 
to a fourth, and when he had pumped himself dry. 


132 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


there was really nobody to enlighten upon any 
subject in the repertory of his vast knowledge ; 
from hyssop that groweth upon the wall down 
to the fixed stars not yet revealed by the most 
powerful telescope in any observatory. 

Then the men returned to the drawing-room, 
and so the evening passed ; Philip happy, and 
more than holding his own, and Florence pleased 
beyond herself to see him handling his fleuret 
with the grace and certainty of a Parisian maitre 
darmes. For Miss Florence had by this time 
grown strangely fond of our young friend, who 
occupied a very considerable portion of her reflec- 
tions. And Philip that night, in the seclusion of 
his chamber, and with a long-looked-for cigar 
between his teeth, felt that life has for all of us 
its silver sides, even although they often come when 
they are least expected. 


CHAPTER XV. 


"VrEXT morning by appointment Philip made his 
way to the bank, where, in a back parlour 
— which, in its magnificence of old carved mahogany 
and cut-glass chandeliers, great silver inkstand, 
and massive silver candlesticks, resembled the state- 
room at Mr. Tulkinghorn^s, with the one exception 
that it was for the City light, and bright, and 
remarkably cheerful — ^he found Mr. Keane, with 
whom he had arranged to lunch. 

There is a peculiar shake a horse gives himself 
when he has just come to the end of an eight or 
ten mile trot. He stands for a minute or two 
with his forelegs stretching to the four points of 
the compass, his head bent to the ground, and his 
whole appearance terribly dejected. Then ap- 
parently, after refl.ecting upon all Mr. Mallock has 
said as to whether life is worth living or not, he 
gives himself a tremendous shake, that must make 
every bone in his body and every nail in his shoes 
rattle and vibrate. Then he goes through an 


134 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


operation which is a snort and a deep inhalation 
combined; and having thus pulled himself together 
he awaits results. Mr. Keane, as nearly as a man 
can, went through this process, which in a man, 
as well as in an animal, is the expression of some- 
thing more than physical contentment — announcing 
also intense but tranquil physical satisfaction. Then 
he said, — 

" People talk a good deal about business, Ainslie, 
Day laoy. Business, after all, is the easiest thing in 
the world if you have only just gone through your 
arithmetic into discount, and those trumpery so- 
called mercantile methods and systems. For busi- 
ness, young gentleman, you want a certain personal 
aptitude. I never yet have been in court and heard 
a really good advocate handling a case but what I 
have said to myself, 'That’s tact; that’s precision; 
that’s adroitness; that’s the great thing of all apti- 
tude and dexterity.’ You may be Lord Chancellor 
one day, my young friend, if you think proper to 
be called to the Bar. I wish you were on the road 
to it, for your own sake. But in business, by the 
time you were forty, if you’d had anything like a 
proper start, you might very possibly have been 
turning over twice as much as a Lord Chancellor, 
with half the trouble and responsibility.” 

"I know nothing about business,” said Philip. 

" That’s a pity. However, I’ll tell you something 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 135 


about it; you can’t get on in business if you’re idle. 
And it’s hopeless to think of getting on in it with- 
out some one to back you at first and to teach 
you the ropes. But given quiet determination, 
ordinary industry, and just a little interest, 'and 
you’re far more certain of success in business than 
in any other calling in the world. Look at the 
Childs, for instance ; they were originally silver- 
smiths. They also lent their customers money 
at interest; and they had a king among their 
customers, who paid them well.” 

“ Just as your tailor nowadays can always let 
you have a hundred or two if he knows you,” 
remarked Philip, “ and enter it against you as 
clothes. Some of the fellows at Cambridge used 
to arrange this.” 

“ A most dangerous practice,” said Mr. Keane 
solemnly. " It amounts to a falsification of a 
trader’s books, which is a criminal offence. But 
what is a banker after all ? He is only a pawn- 
broker on a large scale. Go to Mr. Attenborough 
for money, and he will ask to see your watch, 
or your chain, or your ring, or your wife’s diamonds. 
Go to your banker for a loan. Unless he knows 
you to be very sound, he’ll ask for a deposit of 
stock, or scrip, or shares, or title-deeds. No banker 
lends so much as a five-pound note except upon 
what he considers an absolute certainty, and he 


136 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE S COURTSHIP, 


lends at bank-rate, which is pretty good interest 
for his money.” 

New lights began to dawn upon Philip. 

“I don’t think I should ever care for business, 
if it is like what you describe it.” 

“ Well, my boy,” said Mr. Keane, a little rebuffed 
by such unanswerable frankness, “it’s exactly what 
I say it is, and I cannot make it better or worse. 
You pay a man what he asks, and you give 
him as much as you are willing to give, if he’ll 
take it. It’s all fair and above board. On the 
Stock Exchange a man announces he’s got ten 
thousand Russians of /73 to sell. Another man 
says he’ll buy them. Nothing is done further in 
the way of transfer. Now the man who sells them 
hasn’t got a Russian of /73 of his own in the 
world, and never had. On the settling day he 
turns up, not with the Russian Stock itself, but to 
demand some money if Russians are below the price 
he agreed upon, or to pay some if they are above 
it. To actually buy or sell a pennyworth of 
Russians was utterly beyond the remotest intention 
of either party.” 

“Then,” said Philip, “business, it seems to me, 
differs very little indeed from betting. The dodge 
is to get the odds a point or two in your favour, 
to catch the turn of the market, and to skim the 
cream before the others get at it. There are 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 137 


hundreds of names for it, but they all mean the 
same thing.” 

“ So it is,” replied Mr. Keane. " * Always give 
your man a point below the odds/ says the stock- 
broker, ‘and force him, if you can, into giving 
you a point or two in your own favour with regard 
to them.’ There is no question of investment in 
the matter. You buy to sell, and sell to buy; and 
the quicker and oftener you can turn over the 
stock-in-trade, the better for you ” 

“ It must be feverish and unwholesome,” said 
Philip. 

“Uncommonly,” Mr. Keane remarked solemnly. 

Then lunch came in, a luncheon new to Philip, 
consisting of turtle soup, followed by turtle cutlets, 
with some wonderful punch, and some marvellous 
little tartlets, the size of a two-shiiling piece, 
which were so light and fragile that they seemed 
to melt away in your mouth. And after the meal 
was over Mr. Keane gravely remarked that he had 
had enough of business for that day. 

“We will stroll up to the club,” he said, “ and 
have a game of billiards. I know you’ll have 
patience with an old buffer who can’t play.” 

The two broke out into a mutual laugh, and up 
to the City club they leisurely sauntered. Philip, 
who was really a firstrate billiard player, did not 
attempt in any way to impose upon Mr. Keane, 


138 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


or to hide the fact that he could beat him 
easily. So they played some very enjoyable 
games. 

“I shall have to win, sir,” he said, ^^for the 
sake of keeping my reputation.” 

“All right, my boy,” said Mr. Keane, “I mean 
to play. I don’t care whether I win or lose ; 
though perhaps, after all, I’d rather win for choice. 
I mean to play my level best. Of course you’ll 
win, but what does that matter ? ” 

So they played, and Philip was honest enough 
to win every game, and polite enough to win each 
game perfectly undemonstratively and by a very 
few points, so that the old gentleman was on his 
mettle, put out all his strength, and enjoyed himself 
immensely ; and must have walked it would be 
difficult to say how many miles round and round 
the table by the time that three or four games 
were over. 

How enjoyable it is to be with pleasant, unag- 
gressive people. A great number of young English- 
men would have been wanting to bet half-crowns 
on the stroke, or ten shillings or a sovereign on the 
game, or something of that sort. However, Philip 
appeared to know nothing of all this, and did, in 
fact, know next to nothing. He liked the game 
for its own sake. Their last game over, which Mr. 
Keane thoroughly enjoyed, as a veteran prize-fighter 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 139 

who can still remember the ropes, and can feel the 
old knife-like pressure of them against his loins, 
enjoys a turn-to with the gloves for the love of 
the thing, they laid aside their leather-tipped 
weapons of war and drove to Grosvenor Square for 
dinner. 

The dinner I need not describe. It was much 
the same as the dinner of the evening before, but 
smaller and more select. 

The few guests left early, and shortly afterwards 
Philip and his hosts retired for the night. Some- 
how or another the three were all tired. It is not 
until about the third day after a heavy fall that 
you begin to realise how you have bruised your- 
self. And so, after a heavy and tiresome evening, 
the reaction from the effects of Mr. Blunderbore’s 
platitudes and Mr. Frip’s chatter does not fully set 
in until the second day at least. And so Philip sat 
with his host and smoked apathetically, almost as 
if he were asleep. Mr. Keane himself was not 
vivacious, and neither, I think, if he had told the 
truth, would have denied that it was a relief to him 
when the evening came to an end. 

Up in his room, with a fire burning pleasantly 
and, in fact, sparkling as if it were alive, Philip 
again indulged in the pernicious practice of a 
bedroom cigar before the bedroom fire. This is a 
bad habit for many reasons, the principal of which 


140 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


that everything that is pleasant and comfortable is 
considered wrong in a young man, and there are 
few things more pleasant and more comfortable than 
smoking before your bedroom fire. He was a great 
philosopher, and far beyond our days, who said 
that everything worth having or doing in this 
world was either wicked or else unwholesome, in 
which cynical remark there will be found, upon an 
examination not at all microscopic, a torrent of 
truth. 

Philip was in love with Florence Keane, and 
had every reason for believing that she knew it 
and was pleased at it; and this was indeed the 
case, and if one may talk at all of the state of 
a young lady’s mind in such matters. Miss Keane 
was herself dangerously near being ki love with 
Mr. Ainslie. So that both the young people were 
thinking out more or less the same problem, and 
that Providence which is often so kindly disposed 
to young people was briskly working things out 
for them in its own way, and, if they could 
only have known it, exactly as they would have 
desired. 

The smoke curled from Philip’s cigar and went 
up the chimney. He watched it, and, as the last 
grey-blue spiral vanished, solemnly prepared another 
one, far more large and symmetrical than its pre- 
decessor. The young man was ah that moment 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 141 


supremely happy. He was certain of himself, and 
was almost certain of Florence; and in no quarter 
of the horizon did he see any danger. Such is 
the confidence of youth, which, because it is an 
unusually hot night in the course of an African 
journey of exploration wants to encamp on the 
grass, and at the same time to extinguish the 
watch-fires. Many a man has been lost in the 
Western prairies by thus camping out without first 
ringing himself in with a lariat, under which 
a rattlesnake has not the strength to force 
himself, and over which he strongly objects to 
crawl. 


CHAPTER XVL 


DAY or two afterwards all was bustle and 



confusion, for in the evening there was to 
be a state ball. Men from Gunter’s and the 
permanent sous-chef of the Lord Mayor himself 
had possession of the kitchen. Mr. Keane had a 
great idea of the City, and of all that came out 
of it, and of all that was in it; and, as regards 
cooking and everything connected with it, a judg- 
ment which firmly and severely inclines this way 
is sure to be correct. 

The ball supper might have been given by the 
Company of Goldsmiths in their colossal marble 
hall at the back of the Post Office. The flowers 
were from Covent Garden; and as orchids were the 
fashion at that time, there were none but the most 
costly orchids from Veitch’s; and perhaps what 
most astonished the guests was that round the 
table ran a little river of water, just between the 
plates and the table adornments. Some unseen 
power kept it in a constant rippling motion, and 
small gold fish and others sported in it. Here 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 143 


and there about the room were pyramids of ice, 
which, in spite of the coldness of the month, the 
blaze of light, and the warmth of the room, 
rendered more than pleasant. 

The ball-room was festooned and decorated en- 
tirely with tropical flowers of every variety, and 
over the garden had been built an annexe, hung 
with genuine tapestry, and scintillant from ceiling 
to floor with the richest and most fanciful Venetian 
glass. 

“Money,” Mr. Keane would gravely say, “can 
do everything you like in this world and every- 
thing you ask it to do except stop disease and 
death, or alter the weather. Which three things,” 
he profanely added, “are in the hands of a Provi- 
dence which manages them or mismanages them in 
its own way.” This was one of his smoking-room 
dictay but it had the merit of strictly representing 
what he thought. 

There were two magniflcent bands. There was 
that of the Coldstream Guards and that of Messrs. 
Coote and Tinneyj and the way in which these 
uniform veterans, both military and civilian, did 
justice both to the music and to the refreshments 
was something marvellous. The latter performance 
reminded you of audit day in the country. One of 
the ophicleides deliberately drank as much cham- 
pagne cup as would have fiUed his instrument; and 


144 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE S COURTSHIP, 


another gentleman, whose medical man, it appeared, 
had recommended him the best hock of which his 
limited income would permit, must have swallowed 
as much Johannisberg of the oldest vintage as 
would have filled or floated the big drum. But if 
a man can drive he can do so drunk or sober, and 
it is much the same with the performer on a musical 
instrument. The physiology of drunkenness is that 
your legs give way first, then your tongue, which 
twitches and jerks in your mouth, and then you 
begin to collapse. The courses of collapse are 
infinite. Its ends are always disastrous. But this 
is a certain rule. As long as a violinist can sit 
on his chair he can play the fiddle. To play it 
when on your back on the floor is quite another 
thing. 

The people at the ball were of the same stamp 
as had been at the dinner, only there was a per- 
ceptibly larger West End contingent, while that 
of the City showed a falling off*. City men them- 
selves like a dinner, and good wine after it; but 
what most of them then want is to go to bed. 
They are hard-working men, and cannot afford to 
burn the candle at both ends. 

Philip did his duty like a man, and danced 
nearly every dance. As far as Miss Keane was 
concerned, I am afraid to say how many valses she 
gave him. The company was so large that nobody 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 145 


noticed what was going on, perhaps for the suffi- 
cient reason that nobody took the trouble to do 
so, else would everyone have assuredly observed 
that in dancing so often with Miss Keane Philip 
must have possessed a secret understanding with 
that young lady. 

When after their last valse they found themselves 
alone in a quiet corner of the conservatory, they 
became of course intensely stupid. Philip turned 
the apology for a blush — his complexion assumed 
all the diversified hues of a silver-side of beef in 
good cut. I am told that with silver-side of beef 
some people eat ham, and the otherwise dead tint 
of his features was lit up with little flecks of ham- 
colour. He looked like a ploughboy dressed up as 
a gentleman, which he could not help ; and he 
allowed himself to feel that he looked like one, 
which he could help, and which was very foolish 
of him. This was the effect of love, which nearly 
always makes a man appear at a disadvantage. 

Miss Keane, although perhaps not a profound 
reader of character, could tell from mere outside 
knowledge of the world what all this meant, and 
pitied the unhappy young man from the bottom of 
her heart. Most women under such circumstances 
are cruel enough to turn the nervousness of their 
admirers into open mockery. “Faint heart, they 
repeat, “ never won fair lady,” with many other 


146 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 


unpleasant proverbs of the same sort, which with 
all this world’s nothingness are carried down by 
the wave of time until they are swallowed in the 
great sea of which we know nothing, and almost 
certainly never shall, and where human line has 
never yet been dropped. 

Philip, who was painfully nervous, at last clenched 
his teeth and said to himself, “Neck or nothing. 
Here goes. Ride for a fall and over you get!” and 
so, to his surprise and consternation, he found 
himself in the thick of the contest before he fully 
realised what he was about. 

“Miss Keane,” said he, “I have been thinking of 
talking to your father.” 

“Yes, Mr. Ainslie. Poor dear papa! I hope it is 
nothing disagreeable; though, after all, very little 
troubles him that does not in some way concern 
me. I believe he dreams about me, and he is at 
my heels whenever he has the opportunity, like a 
nurse, or a governess, or a great Newfoundland dog, 
until I can see his friends from the club laughing 
at him. Then it strikes him how silly he’s been. 
For poor dear papa has lots of common sense, which 
is never obscured except through his love for me. 
But in a week or two as surely as possible he 
begins again to play the roU of the hen with one 
chick, and then there’s no rest for me except by 
stolen snatches. That’s how the matter stands.” 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 147 


They both laughed. 

“I don’t think the business will be disagreeable 
to your father, Miss Keane, or one in any way 
calculated to cause him trouble, which I fancy he 
dislikes more than anything else in the world, for 
a very great number of very good reasons. But it 
may startle him a bit if it comes upon him unex- 
pectedly; so I shall lay things before him clearly 
and definitely, giving him full time for considera- 
tion. It’s a matter after all in which it would be 
the better I should have his cordial concurrence, 
but in which it is you and I who are most con- 
cerned. The matter at the end will be really one 
for our own decision.” 

Miss Keane, of course, knew perfectly well at 
what Philip was driving. Any girl of sixteen, with 
wits to match her years, could have, in modern 
young lady’s language, spotted the matter, put it on 
the stocks, and worked it out to a satisfactory 
conclusion with the fiddlers, and the thunder, and 
the blue lights by way of imparting a classical and 
histrionic glamour to the final scene. 

However, like all women, there being a straight 
way to do the thing and a crooked one, an open 
and an underhand, Florence chose the paths of 
mystery. The choice is the stupidest in the world,' 
for one reason if for no other. Once committed to 
the ways of mystery you have no rest either of 


148 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 


mind or of body. You have your work to do as 
if you were a cab-horse, and you are made to do 
it, miserable creature that you are! exactly as a 
cab-horse is made to do his. 

“ I cannot possibly think what you mean,” she said. 

This was palpable fencing, and fencing of a 
very weak description. 

Philip soon put it aside. 

am not here to-night, Miss Keane,” he said, 
*Ho make fun. I am terribly in earnest, and what 
I have got to say is a matter of life and death 
to me. I want to ask you to be my wife.” 

“ That requires a good deal of consideration, 
Mr. Ainslie. We don’t know much of each other 
yet.” 

“I know quite enough of you,” replied Philip, “to 
be certain that I shall be a wretched man for the 
rest of my life if you refuse me. I am not a 
demonstrative or a gushing man, and I can’t tell 
you half I feel. I know that I am making a great 
fool of myself talking to you like this.” 

“/ don’t think so, Mr. Ainslie.” 

“ I know I am, all the same. But I do love you, 
Florence, truly and devotedly, and from the bottom 
of my heart, and I was bound to tell you so 
somehow. I hope you are not angry.” 

“Of course I am not angry,” answered Florence. 
“ I will tell you frankly that I like you better than 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 149 


any other man I have ever met. But I could not 
marry without papa’s consent, and I must honestly 
tell you that I don’t think he will give it. Papa 
likes you very much, and all that, but I am a 
goose that in his eyes is a swan, and he has very 
high notions about me. They are probably not 
shared by any one else, but there they are. He 
thinks that I ought to be a queen — poor papa!” 

“He is quite right,” said Philip. “So do I. Be 
my queen, dearest Florence.” 

Florence looked at him full in the face. “Well, 
I will, Mr. Ainslie, if you can get papa’s consent. 
And you may ask him as soon as you like.” 

“My darling!” said Philip, as he pressed her 
hand. And when they walked out again among 
the dancers, Philip’s gauche manner and appearance 
had quite vanished, and he looked, as he was, a 
handsome, genial giant, well set up, and ready for 
anything, from a voyage to the North Pole to an 
attempt to cross the Black Continent, 

When a man is walking about a ball-room with 
his partner on his arm, it is, of course, impossible 
for any one to know what he is saying unless he 
deliberately follows and listens to him. This is an 
almost impossible manoeuvre. It may be doubted 
whether Paul Pry himself would have attempted it. 
So the conversation was continued, and continued, 
apparently, if any one had been observing, to the 


ISO YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^ S COURTSHIP, 


complete satisfaction of both parties. The final 
arrangement was, that the present day, which was 
on the eve of breaking, should be, in Philip’s words, 
a day of truce, but that battle should be opened on 
the morrow. As for the result of the battle, there 
were ominous clouds on the horizon, but, as Philip 
observed, “we must trust in Providence and keep 
our powder dry.” No remark sounds so profound 
as this, and there is perhaps none other so good 
to make when none other is possible. It is like 
telling a little boy who is engaged in conflict with 
a bigger boy to “let him have it; hit him a 
snorter on the nose and go in and win:” than 
which nothing could be more satisfactory or end 
matters more cheerfully if it could only be 
done. 

“ You must deal with papa,” Florence said, 
“politely and gently, but firmly, and in a manner 
which shows you mean business. He will respect 
you for it, and will be much more likely to give 
his whole attention to what you have to say. 
There is nothing he dislikes so much, he says, as 
people who come walking and talking around him 
and at him when he knows what they mean the 
whole time.” 

“I shall be perfectly plain and straightforward 
with your father,” said Philip. 

“You must not ^^ush at him, of course, but you 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 151 


must let him know quietly and plainly exactly 
what it is you mean and want, just as if it were 
an ordinary piece of banking business. He will 
respect you for that, and you will find your way 
much easier. Don’t say a word that isn’t simple 
business until he asks you, as he will be sure to 
do, whether it’s me you want or whether it’s my 
money. Then get very angry, as you will have a 
perfect right to do, and ask him whether he means 
to insult you. You will then find everything much 
smoother sailing. Be humble at first, or rather be 
deeply respectful, but if papa begins to ride the 
high horse, ruffle every plume on your body. 
That’s my advice, and there’s not a soul in the 
world knows papa as well as I do.” 

** You’re an angel!” said Philip, 


CHAPTER XVIL 


N the day that succeeded the ball nothing was 



done. Even Philip lay in bed and dreamed 
about incongruous things — grouse-shooting and his 
mother’s knitting; Moses striking the rock and the 
discovery of oilskins ; the distinctions between Brigh- 
ton and Saratoga; and whether it was better to go 
fast or slow when riding at timber. The day at last 
came to an end. On the morning of the next day 
the bugle would sound for engagement, so he went 
to bed very deliberately indeed, tucked the clothes 
round him, took a cigar of small dimensions, and, 
while smoking it, considered how he should best 
broach the all-important subject to Mr. Keane to- 
morrow. 

I do not want to go in detail through an inter- 
view which was partly strictly commercial and 
partly friendly sentimental. Mr. Keane first of all 
began about money matters. What was Philip 
worth ? Philip told him the exact truth to a 
penny. Mr. Keane sniffed, and said it was very 
little, but he supposed that love could live upon 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 153 


very little, and of course it was open to love to 
do so if it chose. This was .perhaps not very en- 
couraging, but it seemed to indicate a glimmer of 
hope and friendly feeling round the corner. The 
old gentleman then wanted to know what Philip 
was going to do or be, he having hitherto been 
brought up to no profession. 

Philip blushed scarlet, and said he thought he 
would rather be a farmer than anything else. He 
understood all about it, and he should enjoy being 
up with the sun and pottering about all over his 
estate. He had had thoughts of travelling, but 
these he should of course renounce if he married 
Miss Keane. 

“ You can canter over your estate easily on a 
little cob,” he remarked, "and when the men learn 
from their children who have been out after the 
partridge eggs, or upon some other simple but im- 
proper quest, that you were down yesterday at 
the eighteen-acre, it is astonishing how bright and 
fresh and neat the eighteen- acre will look the next 
(lay. The masters eye makes the corn grow.” 

And here I wish to make a remark which I 
verily believe to be true, but which will cause 
many people to be very angry with me. Years of 
oppression, if you like to call it so — or of absence 
of anything like the intelligent use of their freedom, 
as I should prefer to call it — have at this time 


154 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^ S COURTSHIP. 


brought the agricultural labourer to a condition 
very little different from that of a serf. Some 
people will tell you that he is elevated intellec- 
tually, morally, and physically as compared with 
what he was twenty years ago. Perhaps he is, to 
a trifling extent, but it is a very trifling extent. 
Indeed, it would be difficult to find any country in 
the world where, as compared with England, the 
lower classes are in such a state of brutishness. 
Russia may perhaps be the one exception, but 
Russia, if so, is aware of the fact, and rather 
glories in it than otherwise, rejoicing that she can 
turn out her serfs by the thousand as England can 
her tin, and coal, and iron. 

Mr. Keane, always practical, remarked that farming 
in England was wholly played out, and in ninety- 
nine cases out of a hundred carried on at a loss, 
and he must tell Philip candidly that he had had 
higher views for Florence than that she should 
become a farmer’s wife, or even the wife of what is 
ordinarily called a squire. She had a big fortune 
and would have a bigger, and her position ought 
to match ; and indeed with any other man than 
Philip he would not have discussed such a propo- 
sition. But he liked Philip, and he considered his 
daughter’s happiness before anything else. He would 
talk it over with Florence, and would let Philip 
know his decision. 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 155 


“Very well, sir. Nothing could be kinder. Will 
you please write it to me ? I shall return to my 
mother’s to-day. Under all the circumstances I think 
it would perhaps be better that I should do so.”, 

“ Yes, perhaps it would,” said Mr. Keane, though 
I shall be sorry to lose you. Well, I must wish 
you good-bye — I have to be at the bank in twenty 
minutes. One thing only : I must ask you not 
to correspond with my daughter until you hear 
from me.” 

“ I promise you that I will not do anything of 
the sort,” replied Philip. 

“Thank you,” said Mr. Keane. “And another 
thing. However all this eventuates, there need be 
nothing, and shall be nothing on my part, to make 
it lead to any rupture in our friendship, which to 
me has been very pleasant, cheerful, and hearty. 
That’s all.” 

Then the two men shook hands cordially, and 
parted in silence. 

The interview with Mr. Keane ended, Philip 
hurried up to the drawing-room, where he knew 
he should find Florence. There she was, on a 
circular ottoman before the fire, pretending to read 
the morning paper, but in reality thinking of her 
lover’s task. She rose as he came in and ran 
towards him, as a child might, without the least 
afiectation. 


156 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 


“ Well, dear Philip ? ” 

“ Well, dear Florence. I think that things look 
well, but it is a very critical moment. We are in 
the position of a beach boat with a heavy surf 
running. If we pitch upon the right wave, and go 
with her, we shall be landed high and dry upon 
the beach. If we miss this we shall be rolled over 
and over, boat and all, and have a very shrewd 
chance for our lives. But I think the saints are 
with us. The Romans, I was taught when I was 
at school, always considered that sailors were the 
special favourites of the gods, and some such vague 
superstition prevails all round our coasts to this 
day, and even more strongly, I am told, in parts 
of Normandy and of Brittany. Well, we are in 
the very heart of the squall. It is a mere matter 
of hours now. And all we can do is to stand by 
and meet the first burst of the gale when it comes. 
I have no doubt that it will be more formidable 
in the show than in the reality.’* 

“ But what has papa said ? Is it anything 
definite ? ” 

“ What he has said, darling, is very definite, 
indeed, as far as it goes. He says he’ll see you, 
and talk matters over with you, and then he will 
write me his decision. He and I are both agreed 
that I had better leave town until the whole matter 
is settled. If it ends as you and I wish, of course 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 157 


I shall hurry back. If not, I shall just return to 
bid you and Mr. Keane good-bye, and I shall then 
take my mother abroad, if I can persuade her to 
come with me. If anything were to go wrong, 
Florence, between us, travel would be the best 
thing to distract one’s mind. Although, after all, 
in my case, I am afraid it would not do so. I do 
hope to heaven that your father will send me a 
speedy answer. If this state of things were to go 
on much longer I should be stark, staring, raving 
mad ! ” 

“ It would be terrible,” answered Florence, wearily, 
‘‘if I were not confident of being able to manage 
my father, and I am confident of this if I have 
ever been so in my life.” 

“ When a dull, commonplace, phlegmatic man like 
myself falls in love,” continued Philip, »“it is love 
and no mistake. I have never cared for a living 
being before, and I could die for you.” 

“Dear Philip!” 

“I am afraid love makes one very selfish, and 
that I do not consider you sufficiently in the 
matter. Of course I feel that you would be better 
off without me; whereas without you — but there, I 
cannot realise anything so awful.” 

“Don’t let us talk of it, Philip.” 

“Well now, Florence,” said Philip, “I think we 
have pretty well exhausted the fair limits that 


158 YOUNG MR. AINSLIR^S COURTSHIP, 


were set upon us. I am sure I have stayed as 
long as your father would wish, and I think we 
ought to respect his wishes in this matter, because 
he is treating us very fairly and well. We must 
play fair ourselves if we want people to play down 
fair to us.” And this pair of virtuous humbugs 
mutually looked at each’ other in the most delight- 
fully pious and self-satisfied manner. 

Then came leave taking, and Philip, after seeing 
to his effects, drove off to the station with three 
or four of Florence’s photographs conveniently close 
to his manly bosom. 

Mrs. Ainslie was, of course, expecting him, and the 
meeting again with his mother, as always, somehow 
seemed to brace Philip and do him good. Once again 
he devoted himself to the cold beef and potatoes, the 
pickles and Truit pie, and the beer and bread and 
cheese of the country house ; and once again he felt that 
peculiar comfort which is oply given by being at home. 

His mother, sensible as always, asked no ques^ 
tions. She saw that something had happened of 
importance, but that its result was absolutely un- 
certain for the present. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 



HILIP, of course, long before they parted 


-J- for tlie nigbt, had told his mother every- 
thing. She took a rather different view of Mr. 
Keane’s conduct to that which her son did, a 
view naturally tempered by a mother’s prejudice. 
There could be no boy like her own son, and 
certainly no woman, from the days of the Queen 
of Sheba to the present, in any way worthy of 


him. 


Two days later, after he had once again made 
a survey of the little estate by tramping over 
every square foot of it, Philip got a letter 
from Mr. Keane, which was short and to the 
point. 

“My dear Mr. Ainslie, — 

“I hope I shall very presently be addressing 
you in more familiar and closer terms. Florence 
and I will be glad to see you as soon as ever you 
are in London again, and will look in. Perhaps, 
after you have read my letter, you will decide upon 


i6o YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


paying another visit to town. Since you went 
away I have had several conversations with my 
daughter relative to your proposed marriage with 
her. You have certainly managed to win her heart, 
and, after all, I am bound to say that I am not 
much astonished at it. 

“ And now, young gentleman, you and I will get 
to business with due solemnity. In the first 
place, I don’t see at this moment, subject always 
to intervening circumstances, of which I can discern 
no trace, any objection to my daughter becoming 
Mrs. Ainslie. That’s simple and flat, and there’s 
an end of it. Secondly, so far from seeing any 
objection, I am excessively pleased, as I believe 
everybody else is, or will be, and I want to see the 
wedding itself, which, after all, is a serious cere- 
mony when you come to think of it, and not merely 
a sort of orange-blossom day. 

“ Let me have a line to say when we are 
likely to see you. Don’t hurry the matter. Let 
me hear in the course of two or three days. 
Meantime, 

“ Believe me, most sincerely yours, 

“Stephen Keane.” 

This kind letter was answered at once. And 
Philip fully recognised the good and generous in- 
tentions by which Mr. Keane had been prompted, 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. i6i 


and promised to be with him within eight-and- 
forty hours. 

“ There’s grit in that boy,” said Mr. Keane, as 
he read Philip’s reply ; “ he sticks to his point. 
I knew he rode steadily and straight, and now 
I see he acts in the same fashion. When he was 
in the saddle his horse had to go straight. I 
particularly noticed that, and now, I am blessed 
if he isn’t riding me, with both hands down, too — 
the young jackanapes ! Well, well! we all of us 
have been young, and I think the less the old 
interfere with the young, except where it’s abso- 
lutely necessary, the better. I remember — and the 
story’s true— a Duke’s daughter who fell in love 
with a subaltern in a marching regiment, and with 
scarcely anything but his pay. Gad I how well 
I remember them both; such a bright, handsome, 
healthy young couple. He with a head of gold, 
and limbs like a giant; she with a little, round, 
saucy black head, and all perky like a new doll 
ought to be. And capital foils they both made 
for each other. I believe in what those Natural 
History fellows say on those subjects. Well, every- 
body was really pleased, except the Duke. The 
Duke was furious. At last there was nothing to 
do but to cave in. At first His Grace vowed he’d 
lock her up in her own room. She said so he 
might. He said he’d have her lover cashiered, 

11 


i 62 young MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


which was, of course, mere bluster, as the young 
fellow stood excellently with his colonel, and was 
very favourably known at the Horse Guards. Ulti- 
mately, it being impossible to have the darkest 
and dampest dungeon beneath the castle keep duly 
sprinkled with slime from the bottom of the moat, 
and properly furnished with its allowance of 
mouldy straw to lie upon and musty crusts to eat, 
it occurred to the Duke that the simplest plan 
would be to give his consent to the marriage, 
and the next day he received and acknowledged 
the young fellow as his son-in-law elect. Well, 
His Grace puffed and blew and got purple at this 
surrender of his dignity. What’s the good of being 
an English Duke if you can’t have everything go 
exactly your own way ? The good of being a 
Duke is to be able to say, ‘I am Sir Oracle, and 
when I open my lips let no dog bark, but on 
tins occasion I see that Providence,’ etc., etc. ' I 
clearly see that Providence is/ etc., etc., ' and I 
shall therefore graciously give my adhesion to what is 
evidently the pre-ordained scheme of the universe.’ ” 

♦ • • ♦ * 

Two days later Philip bade his mother good-bye 
and came up to London. He put up at Wood’s 
Hotel, Furnival’s Inn, one of the most curious old 
places of entertainment in London, and thence duly 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 163 


apprised Mr. Keane of his arrival. Round came 
the old gentleman at once. They looked at one 
another, and there was no need for settling matters 
or even talking over them. 

“ Well,” said Mr. Keane, we’ll dine at Home 
to-night, if you don’t mind” — if he didn’t mind! — 
“ I don’t want to go anywhere afterwards. A chat 
about nothing at all will be pleasanter for all of 
us. What have you been doing in the country, 
Philip, my boy ? ” 

“ I was waiting and wondering what turn 
things would take.” 

“Well,” said Mr. Keane — “well, I had much less 
worry. I just considered the matter in all its bear- 
ings, and then I said, ‘Let things slide. Let 
things slide’ is exactly what I said. And they 
h ive slid ; and the consequence is that here we 
are again, as the clown says in the pantomime, 
when he comes down on the double piece of board 
in the scat of his trousers and makes the house 
ring. Here we are again.” 

And so carefully had been the whole mechanism 
arranged, that at the old wheeze Philip found him- 
self laughing heartily. So after the young man 
had hurriedly and tremblingly dressed himself, off 
they drove to Grosvenor Square, where they had 
the most delightful of evenings. A little dinner, 
exquisitely ordered, with the most perfect wine 


i 64 young MR. AINSLIE' S COURTSHIP. 


and hothouse flowers beyond perfection in simple 
profusion as before. Then they sat in front of the 
fire, and spent some little time in listening to an 
immense Parisian musical-box, in which Mr. Keane, 
had as he put it, that morning invested as a cheer- 
ful purchase, and anyhow worth its price. Then 
the banker felt particularly anxious as to the latest 
telegrams from Madrid, where they were expecting 
another Carlist insurrection, or something of the 
sort; and when told that they had arrived ordered 
them to be taken into his study and the fire stirred ; 
and then the old gentleman trotted down with all 
the alacrity of a financier to whom money is money, 
and the great principles involved in it the same, 
whether it be a sixpence or so that is at stake or 
tens of thousands -of pounds. 

The drawing-room in Grosvenor Square was very 
cheerful. The fire crackled, and its light, made 
pleasanter by that of many wax tapers, fell all 
round. Florence was very gracious. Philip went 
straight up to her and took her by both hands. 

“ My own dearest,” he said, I suppose we have 
each of us chosen ? ” 

“Of course we have,” answered Florence, as if to 
anticipate talking or discussion. “Of course we 
have.” And then she gave a great sigh of relief, 
as if the matter had been one with which she her- 
self had nothing to do, but in which she was most 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 165 


deeply interested. A most truthful sigh, and almost 
sad in its intensity. 

“ There’s nothing to be done now, Florence,” 
said Philip with a kiss that formed a striking 
contradiction to his words. 

“ Nothing, dearest, except to sit here before the 
fire and talk to one another and be happy.” 

There were some feeble attempts at conversation, 
such as this : — 

“Your father was very good to give his consent.” 

“ Dear old father ! I was dreadfully doubtful at 
one time. Then I felt pretty certain he would come 
round, he is so fond of me. He never can refuse 
me anything.” 

“ Well,” was the reply of the always practical 
Philip, ‘‘it is settled now, and can’t be undone. 
We are inside the mole with smooth water under 
us, and nothing to do but to make our lives 
one perpetual sunshine.” And in this most philoso- 
l)hical remark Florence entirely concurred. 


CHAPTEE XIX. 


^ I ^HE next afternoon Mr. Keane, radiant with 
almost schoolboy delight, proposed to Philip 
that that night they should make an outing of it. 

“Well be a couple of young bucks for once in 
a way, you and I, my boy,” he said ; “ and, like 
the unrighteous, will ‘grin like a dog, and run 
about the city ’ ” — of which the old gentleman 
really seemed to ■ have a remarkably accurate 
knowledge. 

They had an early dinner at the club, where 
they loitered over a bottle of Lafitte, with a de- 
lightfully delicate flavour and warmed to the point 
of perfection. 

Then they went to the Frailty and turned into 
the stalls. The piece was a dull one, and they 
determined to throw it up ; so at Mr. Keane’s 
suggestion they adjourned to the “Excelsior.” 

“There is always something to be seen there,” 
said Mr. Keane, philosophically. “It mayn’t be 
good, even of its kind ; but there it is. You can’t 
say you haven’t had your money’s worth; and a 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 167 


very stodging good money’s worth too. That’s 
what one of our most successful managers said to 
me the other day of New York. He said they 
always hit the popular taste there. They don’t 
care whether they hit it hard or soft, but they 
go on hitting at it, and they always give you a 
dollar’s worth of amusement for a dollar. And 
really, nowadays, the public will take anything, 
if only it’s good of its kind, and is, more or less, 
crammed down its throat. I believe there’s not. 
a duchess in England that wouldn’t give anything 
to go to the Pavilion if only she could do so 
without anybody being the wiser; and I am told 
that some of theni have actually done it, with a 
thick veil on. And why not, after all?” 

“ I am sure I have no objection,” said Philip. 

“Let us lay aside affectation,” continued Mr. 
Keane. “ When Her Grace comes away she has 
done nothing very wrong in itself, nor, indeed, 
anything that many of her no less virtuous sisters 
have not done before her.” 

“I don’t know much about duchesses,” answered 
Philip. 

By this time they had reached the “Excelsior” 
itself, and a gorgeous spectacular piece they saw, 
put on with a reckless disregard of expense, 
characteristic of the young coal-owner, county- 
owner, and peer, whose munificence also provided 


i68 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


some of the diamonds that blazed in it. The 
dancing was beyond perfection, and the acting 
was vivacious and clever in the extreme, with 
the exception of that of the prima donna, whom 
several attempts were made to hiss, but were suc- 
cessfully combated by well -organised approval on 
the part of a highly-intelligent and discriminating few. 

Much more money had evidently been spent by 
the management than they could have got back 
again, or than they could ever hope to get back. 
But then the prima donna was satisfied, so what 
did it all matter? 

Mr. Keane was amused, but evidently a little 
nervous lest he should be seen' by some of his 
clerks, of whom there might very possibly be one 
or two in the house. But, beyond this, there was 
nothing whatever to disturb, as chairmen say, the 
harmony of a most enjoyable evening; and it 
would really be wrong to suggest, in any way, 
that Mr. Keane’s own nervousness was anything 
more than such as a man suffers from when certain 
well-known twitches inform him that his old 
friend, the gout, is going to knock at his door. 
So they sat the performance through to the last, 
and then, at Mr. Keane’s suggestion, walked round 
— for it was a beautiful night — to Drury Lane. 

The Albion still retains some of its old char- 
acteristics, although it has been most unfeelingly 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 169 


modernised ; but the company is much the same, 
and so is the remarkable tripe, and a little imagi- 
nation will do all the rest. 

Mr. Keane, who knew it well before its more 
modern changes tpwards beauty and light and the 
{esthetic generally, which do not trend in the 
direction of old-fashioned comfort, was annoyed. 
Philip again was like a schoolboy. There never 
had been such a place, never such a supper, 
nothing ever so interesting. Just as he was 
thinking of all this, in came Mr, Hooker, the 
famous low comedian that had been making them 
roar with laughter at the “Excelsior.” 

Mr. Hooker walked up with his legs bent in a 
curious fashion and with his hat on the side of his 
head ; and, having saluted some four or five friends 
seated at one of the tables, sat himself down and 
proceeded to recruit himself with what was cer- 
tainly a well-earned meal. The company included 
a great number of theatrical celebrities. Of course 
a great deal of ‘‘ shop ” was being talked, but the 
humour of the conversation relieved what would 
otherwise have been its monotony. It was a 
capital supper, with plenty of punch, which is 
the speciality of the Albion ; as is turtle of one 
or two marvellous old houses in the City. Then 
it was mutually agreed that enough punch had 
been consumed, and so they sallied out into the 


170 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^ S COURTSHIP, 


street, and a cab was soon conveying the old 
banker to Grosvenor Square; while Philip settled 
his limbs and walked quietly home to FurnivaVs 
Inn, where he was very glad to tumble in, and 
much too excited to do anything than to mix 
up one thing and another in his ideas, and so 
juggle himself to sleep. 

Early in the morning for London, that is to say 
about ten o’clock, Philip scrupulously apparelled 
himself, not as a caricature of a trainer, but as a 
young English gentleman should. First he called 
at Hatchett’s, and inquired for a friend, an old 
college chum, who was staying there — not the dear 
old Hatchett’s of eight or ten years ago, but the 
red brick and white stone Hatchett’s of to-day. 

“ Out upon Time, which for ever will leave 
But enough of the past for the future to grieve, 
Eemnants of things that have passed away. 

Fragments of stone marked by creatures of clay.” 

The friend he had called upon being out, he 
proceeded to Grosvenor Square. It was .now about 
twelve, and Philip, in spite of his terrible dissipa- 
tion of the previous evening, looked as fresh as 
paint. Florence received him most affectionately, 
playfully scolded him for keeping her father up so 
late the night before, and told him that she had 
some people coming to lunch, adding that she was 
afraid it would be dreadfully dull. There was 


YOUNG MR. AINSLINS COURTSHIP. 17 


a Mrs. Moidore coming with her two daughters. 
Mr. Moidore had been for a number of years a 
clerk at two hundred a-year to a member of 
Lloyd’s. “Diligence and attention to business” at 
last made him fit to become a broker on his own 
account. He found the necessary securities, which 
are not large, but not always easy to obtain, as 
their responsibility is considerable, and • he thus 
became a member of Lloyd’s, and had amassed a 
very large fortune indeed. Then there was ex- 
pected the eldest son of a peer, with no other 
particular, distinction : — 

** What was his qualification ? One. 

Earl of FitzDodderel’s eldest son.” 

This young gentleman was Lord Helsham, and, 
truth to tell, he had commenced to cast sheep’s 
eyes — whatever these may be — at Florence, and 
was at all events desperately smitten by that 
young lady’s charms. 

There was also to be a curate, whose general 
ideas upon English geography, especially as con- 
nected with the Clergy List and Clergy Patronage, 
were suspiciously extensive. There was a City 
rector expected, a divine with no patronage of his 
own, but nevertheless understood to be a person of 
“interest” in Church matterj^ and whom it was 
desirable that young curates should salute in high 


72 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 


places and at the corners of the streets. The party 
would be made up by a young gentleman in the 
Blues from Knightsbridge Barracks, who banked 
with Mr. Keane’s firm, and a Queen’s Counsel and 
his wife. The Queen’s Counsel was taking advan- 
tage of the cheapness of land, and was wisely 
investing in it, intending to get a seat in Parlia- 
ment at the next General Election, and having 
reasonable views to a future Attorney-Generalship, 

All these people arrived in due course and sat 
down to lunch. I suppose one must not say that 
these luncheons and dinners are a bore# In the 
first place, as a rule, you get very good wine 

and refreshment at them, and are sometimes pro- 
vided with a good cigar afterwards. In the next 
place they turn your mind in the direction of 

what the world is thinking, and so shake the 
cobwebs out of you. Lastly, they are occasionally 
bright, and sparkling, and vivacious. It always 

pays from a secular point of view to belong to 
these amicable little coteries, even though affairs of 
great importance may not allow you to devote 

more than a very limited portion of your time 
indeed to them. 

Such a party as the present ought not to have 
been dull, but there are two or three facts to be 
taken account of in ’human life. In the first place, 
all men are dull, almost without exception, when 


YOUNG MR. AINSLTE^S COURTSHIP. 173 


they find themselves unable to shake off their 
occupation, or to prevent themselves from carrying 
it into private life. The theory of equilibrium and 
of floating ballast is wonderfully interesting, or 
ought to be, to those who own ships, or charter 
goods, or have goods chartered to them, or are 
members of Lloyd’s. But beyond this narrow 
circle no one knows or cares anything about load- 
lines or other such questions. The ship floats, and 
that is enough for them. 

The City rector looked grave, and as if he bore 
a heavy weight on his shoulders. This could 
hardly be on account of his resident parishioners, 
which were eight, consisting of eight City clerks 
whose duty it was to remain in the City from 
Saturday to Monday, and report regularly whatever 
might have happened since they took duty from 
the close of making up the cash balance on 
Saturday afternoon. The rector somewhat dis- 
agreeably snubbed the curate, a poor little fellow 
who only wanted, like everybody else, to be 
allowed to get on in this world, but whose ideas 
of getting on were as limited as those of the Vicar 
of Wakefield himself. 

The curate, thinking to say something which 
should make things pleasant all round, remarked 
that our immense naval prosperity was the^ great 
source of our wealth no doubt, and that we were 


174 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 


becoming the great carrying traders of the world 
rather than the great merchants, in which respect 
we had somewhat lost our hold, but upon the 
whole English ships were more fairly built, better 
manned, and better commanded than those that 
came from any non-English port. 

The rector replied that the ways of the Lord 
at sea were ways of mystery, as the Psalmist had 
said. He, for his part, entirely disagreed with the 
curate. Of course he might be wrong, but he 
should have thought himself that a suburban 
parish in the neighbourhood of Finchley was hardly 
the place in which to acquire a knowledge of 
nautical matters; but every man knew best, he 
supposed, how to regulate his own time. 

The vast question of shipping having thus been 
nipped in the bud with a genuine episcopo-locuto- 
causa finita est, things in general began to recover 
their proper importance, and it soon came with 
everybody to be understood that if you met a 
hippopotamus and asked him his opinion about 
things in general, he would decline to commit 
himself, but would answer that things in general 
mattered nothing to anybody in particular. But 
the ethical turn into which the conversation had 
drifted was not generally interesting, and Philip 
was far from sorry when the company gradually 
melted away, and he was left alone with Florence 


YOUNG MR, AINSLINS COURTSHIP. 175 


Another thing that had somewhat troubled him 
was the easy-going and confidential, not to say 
familiar, manner in which Lord HelsLam, who sat 
next to her at lunch, appeared to treat Florence; 
and being simple and unused to London society, 
Philip neither understood it nor relished it. 

" I detest professors as a rule, and autocrats of 
the breakfast table,” said he, “ even though there 
is much to forgive every time you take him up 
in Oliver Wendell Holmes. But after all, you 
must talk to somebody. First of all there is the 
person you are talking to, and he almost certainly 
thinks you a fool, though he doesn’t tell you so. 
Then there is yourself, who most certainly think 
the other man a fool. Then there is the third 
man in the gallery, who implies that you are both 
correct, and who has told you as much, but in 
reality thinks you both fools. So much for public 
opinion. Nine times out of ten it is malicious, and 
on every occasion it is almost certain to be 
erroneous.” 

“ I entirely agree with you, Philip dear. But 
now I want to know your private opinion. What 
do you think of Lord Helsham?” 

‘*Well, I don’t like him.” 

“ Why not, Philip ?” 

“ Well, I have no very strong or sufllcient 
reason for my dislike. 


176 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


‘I do not like thee, Doctor Fell, 

The reason why I cannot tell ; 

But this I know, and know full well, 

I do not like thee. Doctor Fell.’ 

Now I don’t quite know why I don’t like Lord 
Helsham : still, I don’t like him. I hope I am not 
fool enough to he jealous, but I did not relish his 
manner towards you, and, since you have asked 
me a plain question, it is best to tell you the 
truth.” 

At this moment Mr. Keane arrived from the 
bank, with a general look of having had a satis- 
factory day. 

“Of course, Mr, Philip,” he said cheerfully, “you 
will stop and dine with us to-night.” 

“Certainly, sir, I shall be delighted.” 

“Very well, don’t trouble to go to your hotel to 
dress, but come to the billiard-room and give me 
my revenge.” 


CHAPTER XX. 


LL arrangements for the wedding were now 



completed. The lovers were fully affianced, 
and the ceremony was to take place at the close 
of the London season in the first week in August. 

With regard to settlements, old Mr. Keane was 
almost reckless. “ For,” said he, “ there is nothing 
like a safe purse in this life — a purse tied up upon 
yourself, which no one can get at even if they 
wish to do so ever so much, and you yourself are 
desirous in everything to meet their views.” It was 
a model of a marriage settlement so far as hand- 
some provision, and safe^^ was made for the two 
young people concerned. For Philip it was a leap 
into affluence. To a Duke^s son it would have, 
been a more than liberal arrangement. Mr. Keane 
did things in princely style. 

“The money is well invested,” said he to him- 
self; “perhaps before he’s forty this young gentle- 
man will begin to take an interest in business. 
To tell the truth, I didn’t trouble much about 
business myself until I found distinctly that I was 


178 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE' S COURTSHIP. 


not so young as I used to be, and that a steady, 
safe-footed cob suited me better than a thorough- 
bred hack. We are all young to begin with — 
babies. Then we go on a little tentatively to try 
on- measure in the .world; it’s at this point that 
Wc5 want a friend. It’s the turning-point in our 
life. Either we get into good company or we can 
get among the rooks. If we get among the rooks 
we shall almost certainly, unless we have something 
in the way of a full-grown hawk for our friend, be 
plucked to our last feather.” 

Philip, luckily for himself, had all along thought 
over these things, and pondered them in his mind, 
and, what is more, he understood them as they 
deserved to be understood. 

It is absolutely incorrect that, as Juvenal says, 
‘ all old men are fools.” On the contrary, if a man 
has lived a regular life, using his brains as per- 
sistently and as attentively as his body, he will 
probably hnd himself with vigorous brain-power 
long after his strength and usual health have begun 
a good deal to fail him. Doctors will all tell you 
that this is correct, and will want to tell you the 
reason for it. The reason is very simple. It is the 
animal life of the human body which is entirely 
distinct from the rational and intellectual life, beinor 
only connected with it by the nerves, which are 
merely long off-shoots of the brain itself. 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 179 


A few days later Philip ran down to his mother, 
who of course had been thinking of nothing else 
but of her son, and of his wife that was to be, 
but, unlike most mothers had not at all worked 
herself into a state of excitement. It was a very 
happy meeting, and must have done them both 
good; for if ever there was a son with a good 
mother, and a mother with a good son, it was 
Philip and Mrs. Ainslie. 

The first and second days after Philip’s return 
passed happily enough. He took long walks with 
his dogs and called upon his friends, most of whom 
had heard of what they called his wonderful good 
luck, and all of whom warmly and sincerely con- 
gratulated him upon it. For, as I have said, Philip 
was a universal favourite. So that all went as plea- 
santly as it could possibly have done, and Philip 
was delighted at the genuine enthusiasm that the 
happy turn in his fortunes had evoked. 

On the third day after his return, Mrs. Ainslie 
came down to breakfast, and told her son that she 
did not feel at all well. In her opinion it was 
never any good keeping things to one’s self, especi- 
ally when they concerned other peojfie. She had 
had a very terrible dream about Philip. Philip 
moved his head uneasilj^, but his mother did not 
perceive the fact ; she was so anxious to get 
through her narrative correctly. 


i8o YOUNG MR. AINSLIR* S COURTSHIP, 


Philip, it seems, had, as she had seen him in 
her dream, got up early, after his habit, and had 
gone to shoot. The result had been his accustomed 
luck — a considerable bag of all kinds of game. 

** It’s a good bag, mother,” he had said, “ but 
there’s something wrong with this gun, something 
that I don’t like at all. I shall change it, or, if 
the gunmaker won’t do that, I shall buy another. 
Anyhow, I am determined to get rid of it. I 
believe it very nearly burst this morning. It’s 
abominably weak in the barrels, and it may carry 
away my fingers at any moment. I shall drive 
over to Fairminster presently and have it thoroughly 
overhauled. I am sure that there is something 
wrong with it, and I don’t mean to keep it.” 

“ I am glad that this was only a dream, mother, 
said Philip. To sell a honeycombed gun is as 
bad in the eyes of a sportsman as to send sailors 
to sea in ships bolted together or pretending to be 
bolted together with short iron nails, instead of 
selected copper bolts. The crime in each case is 
worse than manslaughter.” 

“ Well,” said his . mother, I dreamt it, dear, and 
there it is. I can’t do more than tell you the thing 
and leave it. But I wish you wouldn’t shoot with 
the gun. Get another gun, my dearest boy. I will 
pay for it. I have not given you a present for 
a long time, and, by accepting this one, you will 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. i8i 


give your mother pleasure, my dear Philip, and 
ease her mind at the same time. I daresay you 
will think me a foolish woman, but I can’t help 
being nervous. I have lived a good many years in 
the world, and I have had a good many dreams, 
but I never recollect a dream that made such an 
impression upon me as this one.” 

“ My dear old sweet, don’t be silly,” cried 
Philip, with an affectionate laugh, my gun is all 
right, and will last me for years. If you want to 
give me a present, I am afraid that there will soon 
be ample opportunity. I shall want such a lot of 
things before long that I verily believe I shall be 
your ruin. And, by the way, I have as yet given 
nothing to Florence — not even an engagement ring.’^ 

“Oh, that is dreadful, Philip! In my young 
days it would have been thought very unlucky. 
You must give her something at once. Stay a 
moment, my darling boy.” 

And Mrs. Ainslie hurried from the room, return- 
ing, however, in a few moments with her jewel 
case in her hand. 

“Here, Philip, is something that I think will 
please my dear daughter. These diamonds,” she 
continued, opening the case, have been in my 
family for many years. They are a little old- 
fashioned as far as the setting is concerned, but I 
daresay are none the worse for that.” 


i 82 young MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


‘‘Mother, they’re magnificent. I have not seen 
them for years, but I recollect them perfectly.” 

“ Well, darling, I shall never wear them again, 
and they will look pretty on your sweet wife. 
Give them to her as from yourself, and I will see 
if I can’t find something else that she will like. 
I daresay that I shall be able to do so if I 
ransick my treasures. And, if not, you and I will 
run up to town and choose her something pretty ; 
and that will give me a chance of meeting her, 
which I am longing to do, dear Philip.” . 

“ Mother, you’re an angel.” 

“I fear not, darling. But I am very fond of you 
and yours ; and Florence will soon be yours.” 

“ I hope so, mother.” 

“ You won’t give up that gun or get another ? ” 

“ Oh, mother, I thought you’d forgotten all 
about that nonsense.” 

“Is it nonsense ? Well, I hope so. But I never 
had such a vivid dream. However, I won’t worry 
you any more with my croaking. Let us come into 
the village; the sun is shining, for a wonder, and 
we ought to make the best of the day.” 

So mother and son sauntered leisurely into the 
lane, and were soon again absorbed in the one con- 
versation that Mrs. Ainslie really cared for — that 
which concerned Philip’s welfare and advantage, 
present and future. There are few such unselfish 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 183 


people in the world as was Mrs. Ainslie — people 
whose whole life is centred in another’s happiness. 
But after all they have their reward, and theirs is 
the peace that passeth all understanding. 


CHAPTER XXL 


LORENCE KEANE was sitting in the drawing- 



room at Grosvenor Square. Some people had 
come to lunch, but they had taken their departure, 
and Florence was alone. She had nothing to do, 
and no plans for the afternoon, and was just sub- 
siding into that lazy, dreamy, delicious condition of 
mind only attainable by people who have no cares, 
or those who are absolutely careless — if we except 
the artificial condition produced by opium — when 
her aunt, Miss Firbank, was announced. 

Now Miss Letitia Firbank was the eldest sister 
of Florence’s mother. She was considerably over 
sixty, but looked much younger. She was tall and 
stately, had been remarkably handsome, and, with 
the one exception of an unhappy attachment when 
she was about seventeen, had never had a care 
in the world. Miss Firbank was in many ways a 
very good-hearted woman, and was extremely fond 
of her niece ; but she was worldly in its hardest 
sense, and would sooner have seen Florence miserable 
with a Duke who ill-treated her than happy with 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 185 


a poor man who made her life contented and 
peaceful. 

There are many such people in the world as 
Miss Firbank, people who with the best intentions 
have wrecked lives and ruined futures with that 
characteristic light-heartlessness which belongs to 
those who fancy that they possess a licence to play 
the part of Providence in dealing with those with 
whom they ai’e brought in contact. 

“ Well, my 6hild, here I am, you see,” said Miss 
Letitia. “ I only got back from Paris last night, 
and have rushed round to see you.” 

“Dear Aunt Letty, I am so glad!” 

What is this news that I hear from your papa ? 
I called at the bank this morning and saw him, 
and he tells me that you are engaged, and to a 
young man without a penny, or next door to it. 
What is the meaning of all this ? Have you gone 
mad since I went away, and has your father 
followed your example ? Tell me, Florence.” 

“ No, Aunt Letty, I think 1 am quite sane, and 
I am sure that papa is.” 

“ Then what does it all mean ? ” 

“ It means that Mr. Ainslie and I are very fond 
of each other. Mr. Ainslie, by the way, though 
by no means rich, is far from being penniless. I 
am certain that you will like him when you see 
him.” 


i86 YOUNG' MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


“I am sure that I shall do nothing of the sort.” 

Well, papa has seen a great deal of him, and 
he likes him immensely.” 

Your father is in his dotage.” 

“Papa IS as sensible as ever, Aunt Letty. He 
has not seen proper to thwart me in what, after 
all, concerns me more than anyone else.” 

“ Why, my dear Florence, with your money 
and your looks you might have married anyone 
Nothing was beyond your reach. I*think, at least, 
you might have consulted me in the matter,” the 
old lady continued, “ before finally pledging yourself 
to this mad engagement.” 

“ I do not consider it a mad engagement. Besides, 
you were abroad, and the whole thing came so 
suddenly. And I am very fond of Philip, and 
nothing would have altered my judgment. We 
love each other, and we shall be very comfortably 
off. That is a combination which ought to bring 
happiness, ought it not. Aunt Letty?” 

“I am very disappointed, my dear, and I can’t 
help saying so. Since your poor mother died, I 
have tried as best I could to supply her place, and 
I am sure that I have taken as much interest in 
your future as she would have done if she had 
been here. And you must admit that it is a little 
annoying to see the hopes I had formed of a 
brilliant future for you shattered in this way ; and 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURISHIP. 187 


to be calmly told by your father that you are 
engaged to this needy country bumpkin, without 
my being consulted in the matter ! ” 

^ Well, don’t say anything more against Philip, 
Aunt Letty — I don’t like it, and it can do no good 
whatever. I am going to marry him, and nothing 
will alter me.” 

“Why,, there is young Helsham head over ears 
in love with you — he told me so himself before I 
went away. Good-looking, well-born, amiable, I 
am sure, and fifty thousand a year if a penny. 
You could have him in a moment if you would 
hold up your little finger.” 

“ Then I certainly sha’n’t hold it up, Aunt Letty. 
Lord Helsham is a fool. He is no doubt rich, and 
he may be good-looking — I don’t consider him so ; 
but lie is simply an idiot.” 

“ So much the better, my dear Florence. What 
does a woman want with a clever husband, as 
long as he has money and position?” 

“ Lord Helsham would drive me mad in a week. 
Nothinor would ever have induced me to have 

O 

married him, even if he had asked m ;. And this 
he has never done, and, probably, never had any 
intention of doing.” 

“And I tell you that he had every intention. 
He would propose to-morrow if I were only to 
give him a hint.” 


i88 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE' S COURTSHIP, 


" Then pray do nothing of the sort, Aunt Letty.” 

“Surely you would not hesitate between these 
two men, Florence ? ” 

“ No, Aunt, that is quite true. But I should 
not choose Lord Helsham. And now let us talk of 
something else, I am getting rather tired of this.” 

“ Well, my dear child, if you refuse to listen to 
reason, of course I have nothing more to say. But 
my last word on this subject is, think the whole 
thing over a little more carefully than you appear 
to have done. You were quite right just now 
when you said that it was a matter that concerned 
you more than anyone else. It certainly does. 
And a hurried, imprudent marriage like the one 
you are about to contract will, in all probability, 
bring its own punishment. Good-bye, my dear 
child, I won’t bother you any more now. Bub 
come and see me in two or three days, and then 
tell me if you don’t think there is some sense in 
what I have been saying, after all.” 

“ Good-bye, Aunt, and thank you for all your 
kindness,” said Florence, kissing Miss Firbank. “ It 
is very good of you to bother your head about me 
at all. I am afraid I appear very ungrateful in 
not allowing you to persuade me, but I do love 
Philip so much I ” 

“Very well, my dear; we shall see, we shall see.” 
And the old lady took her departure in the devout 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE*S COUR 2 SHIP. 189 


hope that some of the seed that she had sown* 
would spring up and bear fruit. The ground 
certainly did not look very promising, but Miss 
Firbank did not altogether despair. She was a 
womari with considerable firmness of character, and 
had always managed to exercise a good deal of 
influence over Florence. .And Miss Firbank had 
made up her mind that if she could possibly 
prevent it the marriage between her niece and 
young Mr. Ainslie should not take place. 

4: * « • 

An hour lator old Mr. Keane came in. 

•‘Aunt Letty has been here, papa,” said Florence. 

“ Yes, I know. I had her bothering at the 
bank. 1 wish she would learn to mind her own 
business.’* 

“Aunt Letty is very kind, papa, and I am quite 
sure wishes me well, but I won’t have her interfering 
between Philip and me ; and this I know is what 
she wants to do. She does not like the idea of 
our marriage, and calls poor Philip horrid names 
— ‘penniless country bumpkin,’ I think she said.” 

“ Damn her impertinence ! ” said Mr. Keane. “ She 
took me to task as if I were a boy of twelve; first 
said I was neglecting my duty towards you, and 
then that I was acting like a madman. At last I 
told her plainly that I would stand it no longer, 
and then she left in a huff.” 


190 YOUNG MR. AINSLTE^S COURTSHIP. 


’ “Well, it does not much matter,” answered 
Florence ; “ my own sweetest papa has let me have 
my own way, and I am a very happy girl.” And 
Florence put her arms round her father’s neck. 

“ God bless you, my dearest child ! ” said the old 
gentleman. “As long as you are happy that is all 
I care for in this world — for it is all I have to 
live for. And I have no intention of allowing you 
to be worried by your aunt.” 

And then, as if by mutual consent, they aban- 
doned disagreeable subjects, and the father chatted 
to the daughter pleasantly, and in that happy 
unconstrained manner which wise parents always 
adopt in their relations with their children. , 


CHAPTER XXII. 



HE following week Philip came up to town 


for a couple of days. Of course he stayed 
with the Keanes, and it is needless to say how 
delighted the two lovers were to be re-united. 

Soon after his arrival Philip presented his fiancee 
with his mother’s gift. Florence was charmed, and 
in the first fiush of pride carried the diamonds off 
in triumph to her father. 

** What do you think of these, papa ? They are 
Mrs. Ainslie’s present to me.” 

“ They are simply magnificent,” said the old 
banker, fairly astonished at the beauty of the 
gems; “and you may tell PhiJip that I consider 
you a very lucky girl.” 

On the day after Philip’s arrival Miss Firbank 
came to lunch. That worthy lady had not seen 
Florence since the interview described in the last 
chapter. Mr. Keane was in the City as usual, and 
no one else was invited. 

“I am not quite sure that you will like my 
aunt, Philip dear,” said Florence, just before the 


192 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE' S COURTSHIP, 


old lady’s arrival. It will all depend upon 
whether she chooses to make herself agreeable or 
not. No one can be nicer and ” 

*^No one can be nastier, I suppose,” said Philip. 
“I gather from your manner, Florence, that your 
aunt does not quite approve of me. Is it not 
so?” 

** Well, to speak frankly,” answered Florence, 
“you are right. But Aunt Letty has not seen 
you yet, and that makes all the difference.” 

“ I am not so conceited as to think that everyone 
takes the same view of me as you do,” said Philip ; 
“ however, I will do my best to make myself 
agreeable to your aunt.” 

‘‘Well,” cried Florence, “it is not of much 
consequence what anyone thinks of either of us, is 
it, Philip, so long as we are mutually satisfied 
with each othey ? ” 

“I should think not,” said Philip, sealing his 
acquiescence with a kiss, and shortly afterwards 
Miss Firbank was announced. 

Florence immediately presented Mr. Ainslie to 
her aunt, and the old lady bowed coldly, and 
extended the tips of her fingers to poor Philip. 
Nevertheless, Miss Firbank was considerably struck 
with the young man’s appearance, and in some 
measure ceased her wonder at what she had hitherto 
considered her niece’s mad infatuation. 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 193 


“ I am delighted to make your acquaintance, 
Mr. Ainslie,” Miss Firbank said. “Florence is 
as dear to me as if she were my own child, 
and her future happiness concerns me quite as 
nearly.” 

“ So Florence has told me,” answered Philip, 
not knowing exactly what to say, and feeling 
instinctively that he had no friend in this old 
lady. Her opening remarks had been sufficiently 
kindly, but her manner did not seem to him to 
be correspondingly genuine. 

“ I shall never succeed in breaking off the 
marriage,” thought Miss Firbank, looking at Philip 
through the corner of her eyes, “by appearing to 
oppose it. Florence is evidently head over ears 
in love with this handsome young fellow, and 
any opposition on my part would only have the 
effect of making her all the more keen. I know 
young women too well. No ; my only chance 
is to trust in time. Many things may occur 
before the wedding-day. Who knows what may 
happen ? ” 

And with these philosophical reflections she took 
Philip’s arm, and, Florence following, the three 
went down to lunch. 

Acting on her present inspiration. Miss Firbank 
made herself as pleasant as possible during the 
remainder of her visit, and as few people could be 

13 


194 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


more charming than the old lady when she chose 
to exert herself in that direction, Florence looked 
upon the meeting of her aunt and her lover as 
distinctly satisfactory. 

Before her departure Miss Firbank took her 
aside, and whispered to Florence, — 

“ He is a very charming young man, and I do 
not wonder at your choice. I am most agreeably 
surprised.” 

Florence, quite unsuspecting, pressed her aunt’s 
hand affectionately. 

“Thank you, dear Aunt Letty,” she said, “you 
have made me very happy. I am sure I should 
have been miserable if you and Philip had not 
been friends.” 

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 

“Well, Philip,” said Florence, when Miss Firbank 
had gone, “ what do you think of Aunt Letty ? 
My belief is that you have quite won her heart. 
Take care what you are about, or I shall be 
getting jealous.” 

“If you really want to know the truth,” replied 
Philip, “I don’t trust her. It may seem very 
suspicious, and indeed ungrateful, of me to say so, 
for she was certainly very civil to me. But I am 
sure you would prefer that I gave you a straight- 
forward answer. I don’t trust your aunt, and I 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. iq<^ 


believe that, if she has the power, she will cause 
mischief between us.’* 

“ She never will have the power, Philip dear ; 
but I think you wrong her all the same,” answered 
Florence. My aunt did not entirely approve of 
the engagement when she first heard of it, but 
now she has seen you she has changed her mind, 
as I always knew she would.” 

“You have known her all your life,” said 
Philip. “ I only met her for the first ’time 
to-day. You are probably right. I have only 
told you the impression she made upon me, 
but I daresay after all it was an entirely erroneous 
one.” 

“ I am sure it was. But it is not much good 
discussing the matter. Time will show. And 
nothing shall ever come between us, shall it, 
Philip?” 

** Nothing, sweetheart.” 

“ Philip, I have never been really happy in 
my life till now — I mean until I met you. Papa 
has always been more than kind to me. He 
is the dearest old pet in the world, as you know. 
Then, too, Aunt Letty has been very good to 
me. In fact, everybody has been very good 
to me, and if I had cried for the moon I 
believe people would have tried to get it for me. 
But you have come into my life and changed 


196 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


my whole being, as it were. I understand * the 
joy of living' now, which before was to me a 
meaningless phrase. Nothing shall ever part us, 
shall it, Philip ? ” 

“ Nothing, my darling.” 

Swear it, Philip.” 

" I swear it.” 

“ Must you really go back to-morrow ? ” 

“ Yes, I am afraid so. But I shall soon be up 
again, and next time I will bring my mother. I 
want you to love her, Florence, and I am sure you 
will when you know her. You will not find her 
a bit like that terrible being, the conventional 
mother-in-law. She does not understand what 
mischief-making means, she is utterly unselfish, and 
she is as true as steel. No words that I could 
employ would do justice to her kindness of heart. 
You see I am very enthusiastic about her.” 

‘'And so you ought to be — I like you all the 
better for it, Philip dear. Our future should be a 
very bright one. I don’t see a single cloud in the 
horizon.” 

“ Neither do I,” said Philip. “ Thanks to you 
I am the happiest man in England, and although 
I can never repay you for your goodness to me, 
it certainly won’t be for want of trying.” 

And then they drifted into that kind of con- 
versation common to lovers, and a good deal more 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


197 


interesting to those selfish individuals than to 
anyone else. 

♦ • • • • 

Miss Firbank had scarcely reached her tiny house 
in Curzon Street when Lord Helsham was announced. 

“ Very glad to see you back again, Miss Firbank,” 
he said. “How did you leave Paris?” 

“ Much the same, Lord Helsham, but I was, as 
I always am when I go there, very sorry to leave 
it — very sorry indeed. One somehow seems to 
breathe there with less difficulty than in London : 
one lives there, and merely exists here.” 

“Nobody likes Paris better than I do,” said the 
Guardsman. “ I generally go over two or three 
times a-year. I don’t know a soul there, but I 
always manage to have good sport. Of course I 
don’t go alone. Three or four of us make up a party, 
and a very pleasant time of it we generally have.” 

“ I’ve not much doubt of that,” answered Miss 
Firbank. 

“ I’m very glad you’ve come back,” continued 
Lord Helsham, “because I want to speak to you 
about Miss Keane. I’ve promised my mother to 
settle down, and I’ve made up my mind to leave 
the service. I’ve had eight years of it, and I’m 
getting rather sick of it. Now I’m awfully fond 
of your niece, Miss Firbank. I daresay it’s partly 


198 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


because I know she don’t care a rap about me. 
And it’s partly because she’s so handsome, and so 
clever, and all the rest of it. Never mind the 
reason; there it is. I’m head over ears in love 
with her. Do you think there’s any chance ? 
I’d make any settlements the old man chose to 
ask for — I’m sure there’d be no difficulty about 
that. My property is quite unencumbered, and the 
tenants pay regularly, which is more than most 
landlords can say. Do you think there’s any 
chance ? ” he repeated. 

I should think that there was every chance, 
Lord Helsham.” 

“ They tell me that she’s half engaged to a 
fellow I met at their house the other day — I 
forget his name, but it don’t matter. A big 
countrified-looking sort of fellow, but no fool, all 
the same, I should think. I daresay there’s no 
truth in it. People tell such awful lies now-a-days 
that one can’t believe a tenth of what they say. 
However, there is some such report going about. 
Have you heard anything ? ” 

There’s nothing in it whatever,” said Miss 
Firbank boldly. As you say, people do tell 
dreadful stories, or at any rate exaggerate in a 
most shocking manner. Mr. Ainslie — that is, his 
name — is a great friend of Mr. Keane’s, and some- 
times stays in Grosvenor Square. That is all. 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


199 


There is nothing between him and Florence but 
ordinary friendship, believe me.” 

“Then you think I should have a chance if I 
proposed ? ” asked Lord Helsham. 

“ I haven’t a shadow of- a doubt about it,” said 
Miss Firbank. 

“Well, I shall take my chance to-morrow.” 

“No,, don’t do that. Wait for a day or two, and 
I will sound my niece in the meantime.” 

“Very well, Miss Firbank, I’ll be guided by you. 
I’m devoted to Miss Keane, and though it may 
sound a bit conceited on my part to say so, I 
think she might do worse than take me.” 

“I should think so, indeed, Lord Helsham. My 
niece would be mad if she refused you.” 

“ Well, I won’t go quite as far as that, but I’d 
try my hardest to make her happy, and I think 
I should succeed. I’ve set my heart on this 
marriage, and I do hope. Miss Firbank, that you 
will help me as much as you can.” 

“You have my very best wishes for your success. 
Lord Helsham, and you can rely upon my doing 
everything in my power to further your views.” 

“ It’s very good of you indeed,” said the young 
man. “ I shall never forget your kindness.” 

“My sole object,” said Miss Firbank virtuously, 
“is the welfare and happiness of my niece. That 
attained, I can sing Nunc dimittis. My task will 


200 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 


be ended. As you know, Florence lost her mother 
when she was quite a little child, and I have done 
my best to supply that mother’s place. If I 
could see her married to you I should be more 
than contented.” 

“Thank you a- thousand times,” replied Lord 
Helsham, in cordial tones^ “ Good-bye.” 

“ If I don’t manage this business by hook or by 
crook,” said the old spinster to herself as the street 
door slammed, “my name’s not Letitia Firbank.” 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


"^TEXT day a messenger from her aunt brought 
FJorence tha following letter: — 

•*119a, Curzon Street, Thursday Mornirig. 

“Dearest Florence, 

“ I had intended coming round to you this 
morning, but I am suffering from one of my ner- 
vous attacks, and am quite unable to leave the 
house. Although feeling wretchedly unwell and 
almost incapacitated from writing, I cannot refrain 
from sending you a line to tell you what has 
happened. 

“ Lord Helsham called upon me yesterday after- 
noon and told me plainly that he wished to marry 
you, and was ready to propose at once if I thought 
there was any chance of your accepting him. Of 
course my duty was quite clear, and I did my duty, 
as I hope I always shall as long as my life is 
spared. I told this estimable young man that there 
was every hope for him. And there ia every hope 
for him, unless you are so madly wicked as to fling to 


202 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


the winds the magnificent prospect that ProvU 
deTice and my management have placed within 
your reach. 

“If you were to refuse Lord Helsham, because of 
your passing fancy for Mr. Ainslie, you would in 
my judgment be committing an actual crime. A 
crime not only towards yourself — a moral suicide) 
but a crime towards those who love and care for 
you, and a crime towards those that are yet unborn. 

“A means must be found — 1 will find it — of 
breaking off with Mr. Ainslie. Ill as I am I will 
drag myself to you to-morrow, unless you would 
like to come and lunch here. Let me know which 
would suit you best. It is quite clear that there 
is not a moment to be lost in discussing the situa- 
tion. Let me hear from you at once and by bearer 
if you are at home when this note arrives. 

“Ever, affectionately yours, 

“Letitia Firbank. 

“P.S. — I took Blanche Langley to the Grey- 
thorps’ dance last night, and I expect that it is 
this that has knocked me up. I thought that I 
should probably have seen you there, and was 
much disappointed. Lady Grey thorp’s conduct with 
young Williamson was simply atrocious. Isn’t it 
extraordinary, his infatuation for her? She must 
be fifteen years older than he is, and hasn’t one 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 203 


feature in her face. She is a mass of paint; and 
her fringe, I know, is not her own: for I saw her 
remove it en masse one day when she was putting 
her hair straight in my room. 

“ The cotillon was a romp, and I came away at 
two, disgusted with the whole thing. You lost 
nothing by not coming, for the men were very 
second-rate and there were very few girls, but 
only a lot of married women who slunk away in 
corners with other women’s husbands. The fact is, 
no men care to dance in London nowadays, and 
it cannot be very pleasant being whirled about by 
half-fledged boys. 

“Lady Throwstone, who was there with Lady 
Maria, had a chandelier of glass on her head ; you 
could see through it from* one room to the other. 
I never saw such bad paste. Lady Maria danced 
the Highland schottische with Mr. Eustace Pon- 
sonby. I never witnessed such an exhibition. It 
was only another name for a dance very properly 
and vigorously put down by the Lord Chamber- 
lain a few years since! and Colonel Knighton, to 
whom I was talking, said it reminded him of the 
native dances in India. Is it not a pity that 
people should go out of their way to be so unlady- 
like? I certainly do not consider Lady Maria a 
desirable companion for you. But this I have 
often told you.” 


204 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


Now it so happened that Florence was at home 
when her aunt’s messenger brought the letter. She 
did not hesitate for a single instant, but at once 
replied as follows : — 

“Geosvenob Square, Thursday. 

“Dear Aunt Letty, 

“I am sorry to hear that you are so unwell. 
I will not trouble you to come to me to-morrow, 
but will come round to you after breakfast. 

“I must confess that I am a little surprised at 
your letter. I cannot follow your reasoning, and 
would prefer not to discuss it. But this I must 
say : that it seems marvellous to me that you 
should imagine for an instant I could be so 
wretchedly mean as to jilt Philip because I have a 
chance of marrying a man who is richer and in a 
better position, but who, as far as my opinion 
goes, is not fit to tie his shoe-string. 

“ I have told you already, and I now repeat it, 
that nothing shall stop my marriage with Mr. Ainslie. 
That is my irrevocable decision, and no useful purpose 
can be served by further discussing the subject. 

“ I know, dear Aunt Letty, that you have 
got what you consider my interest at heart, and I 
am sincerely grateful to you; but in this matter I 
am the best judge of my own happiness, and, at 
any rate, I intend to abide by my own judgment. 

“Your afiectionate niece, ** Florence.” 


YOUNG MR. AINSLINS COURTSHIP, 205 


Miss Firbank’s frame of mind for the two or 
three hours immediately following the receipt of 
Florence’s answer may he easily imagined. Her 
unhappy maid had a very bad time of it. I should 
not like to repeat that lady’s remarks when she joined 
the circle at tea in the housekeeper’s room. They 
were certainly not complimentary to her mistress. 

The old lady was in truth bitterly disappointed at 
what she called her niece’s folly and ingratitude. 
Her one idea had been that her favourite young 
relation should make a brilliant match. She was 
not altogether selfish in her views. Common fairness 
compels me to admit as much. She had herself 
little or nothing to gain from such an event, but 
somehow she had set her heart upon it, and if she 
had been the hardiest adventuress with a daughter 
to sell to the highest bidder she could not have 
been more eager. She was ready to quarrel with 
her brother-in-law, whom she considered most to 
blame in the frustration of her schemes for 
Florence’s advancement, and as for her niece, she 
would have liked to have whipped her. She did 
notj however, entirely give up the battle, although 
she began at last to despair of ultimate success. 
But Miss Firbank was one of those people who 
never know when they are beaten, and are propor- 
tionately dangerous antagonists with whom to cope. 

When Florence called the next morning, her 


2o6 young MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


aunt had, more or less, recovered her equanimity, 
and received her niece in the most cordial manner. 

" I hope you are better, Aunt Letty, to-day,” 
said Florence, in returning the former’s kiss. 

‘*Yes, dear, I am a good deal better, although I 
fear that your letter of yesterday did not con- 
tribute to my recovery.” 

“Well, Aunt, I’m sorry if it in any way annoyed 
you, but I thought it only fair to you, as indeed 
to myself, to put the matter in question beyond 
any doubt. When one has quite made up one’s 
own mind, as I have, it is no good raising hopes 
in yours, or in that of Lord Helsham, which can 
never by any possibility be realized.” 

“But, my dear child, you can’t possibly have 
decided. You have had no time to fully consider 
the matter. There is no immediate hurry — that is 
to say, no hurry for a few days. I told Lord 
Helsham that he must not be too precipitate. He 
is as good as gold, and promises to be guided by 
me. Dear me, what a bright future you are jeo- 
pardizing! And for what? Mr. Ainslie is well 
enough in his way. I don’t in the least want to be 
unjust to him ; but for the life of me, Florence, I can- 
not understand your infatuation for that young man.” 

“ You don’t want to be unjust to Mr. Ainslie, you 
say. Aunt Letty. But you want me to be unjust 
to him, wickedly and cruelly unjust. You want 


YOUNG MR, AINSLINS COURTSHIP. 207 


me to jilt him without any sufficient cause — 
indeed, without any cause at all. I cannot be so 
base as that. Besides, as I have told you twenty 
times, I am very happy as I am ; happy and 
content at the prospect of marrying the man I love. 
Papa approves of my choice, and has the highest 
possible opinion of Philip. Even you. Aunt Letty, 
will in time be reconciled to my marriage with him. 
Don’t frown and shake your head. I am sure you 
' will. Why, only two or three days ago you said 
you didn’t wonder at my caring for Philip ; and if 
Lord Helsham had never spoken to you about me, 
I am sure you would have been satisfied.” 

“ I should never have been satisfied, Florence ; 
although I admit that I might have become resigned 
in time. But the situation has now entirely 
altered, and in the name of heaven I ask you to 
reconsider it.” 

“ I cannot do so, Aunt Letty. I must and will 
keep my word.” 

“ Very well, my dear. I can argue with you no 
further, and can only say that one day, when it is 
too late, you will regret your headstrong conduct.” 

“ I shall never regret it,” answered Florence, 
"never, I am sure. Good-bye, Aunt, I must be 
going — there are some people coming to lunch.” 
And Florence beat a retreat, not sorry that tho 
interview was over. 


2o8 young MR, AINSZ/NS COURTSHIP. 


“Young girls, nowadays, are perfectly maddening,” 
said Miss Firbank to herself. “ Thank God I have 
got no daughters of my own; for if I had, and 
they behaved as this wilful child is doing, I 
think I should murder them ! I do indeed.” 

And half an hour afterwards the old lady was 
discussing with the Honourable and Reverend 
Eustace Reredos, who had dropped in at lunch- 
time, the worldliness of the present age and the 
entire absence of simplicity from our daily lives. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


TTpROM Miss Letitia Firbank, Curzon Street 
Mayfair, to Lord Helsham, Guards’ Club : — 


“199a, Quezon Street, Friday , 

“Dear Lord Helsham, 

“ I can scarcely find words to tell you how 
grieved I am to be compelled to write you this 
letter but I must not shrink from a manifest duty. 

“ I saw my niece this morning, and was horrified 
to learn that she has in some way or other 
become entangled with that Mr. Ainslie, of whom 
you spoke when you were here on Tuesday, and 
that she considers herself more or less engaged to 
him. 

“Whether this unhappy complication will have 
any serious result, I cannot, of course, say, but 
after your frank statement to me it would have 
been most culpable on my part to have left you 
for a moment in the dark as to the turn that 
affairs have taken. I have reasoned with Florence 

U 


210 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 


as to her most unwise conduct in letting herself 
be thus compromised, and perhaps my warning and 
counsel may bear fruit. Heaven grant it may he 
80 ! But, unfortunately, I cannot speak with any 
certainty on this point. 

‘‘I am sure that Florence likes you — what girl, 
indeed, would not ? ” [" All men like flattery,” 

thought Miss Firbank, “so long as you don’t let 
them see that it is flattery.”] “ And all may 
come right in the end. You know, dear Lord 
Helsham, that you have a staunch friend in me, 
and that you may implicitly rely upon my good 
offices. 

“Directly there is anything more to communicate, 
and whether my news is good or bad, you shall 
hear from me. In the meantime, and in face of 
what it has been my painful duty to tell you, of 
course you will not propose. I should not wonder 
however, if this silly infatuation were to quickly 
wear oflfi and in that case all may yet be well. 

“ Believe me, dear Lord Helsham, 

** Always most sincerely yours, 

“Letitia Firbank. 

“P.S. — Florence spoke most kindly of you — and 
I cannot but think that in her heart of hearts she 
regrets her rash conduct.” 


YOUNG MR. .AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 21 1 


“That letter will keep the matter open,” thought, 
Miss Firbank. “It will save Lord Helsham’s 
amour 'propre being wounded by a refusal; and 
the possibilities I have shadowed forth of a happy 
termination of the whole affair will prevent his 
abandoning the pursuit as hopeless. He is evi- 
dently much in love, and the difficulties of his 
path will but quicken his passion.” 

From Lord Helsham to Miss Firbank:— 

" Guards’ Club. 

“ Dear Miss Firbank, 

“ To say that I was disappointed and grieved 
at getting your letter would be but to faintly 
convey to you my feelings at its receipt. Our 
recent interview made me hopeful of better things, 
and your bad news came as a crushing blow. 

“ Now for the future : if Miss Keane really 
cares for Mr. Ainslie I have nothing more to say. 
I should be the last man in the world to have 
the least desire to come between two people who 
are attached to each other. Please ascertain this 
for me, or give me leave to ascertain it for myself 
from Miss Keane. I shall then know how to act, 
and whether to wait in the hope that somehow 
things may come right in the end, or to abandon 
the matter entirely. 


212 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 


‘‘You know how fond I am of your niece, and 
I am sure are well aware that there is nothing I 
would not do — that is to say nothing honourable — 
to win her regard and make her my wife. I must, 
as I have done throughout, leave matters in your 
hands, and will be guided as far as possible by 
what you tell me is the state of Miss Keane’s 
mind and feelings. 

“ I am afraid that I have not expressed myself 
very well; but I hope, at any rate, that I have 
made my meaning sufficiently clear. 

“ Again thanking you for your kindness, 

“ Believe me, very sincerely yours, 

“ Helsham.” 


From Miss Keane to Mr. Ainslie : — 

“Geosvenor Square, Friday. 

“My dearest Philip, 

“There is not much news to tell you, and 
I was going to say that, what little there is, is 
not of a particularly agreeable nature. But, after 
all, I don’t see why I should say that. I have 
had an offer — now don’t be frightened ! — from Lord 
Helsham. Not a direct proposal, but one made 
through Aunt Letty — a sort of tentative attack I 
will call it for want of a better phrase. 

“I think it is unnecessary to tell you what kind 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 213 


of answer I made, and that it would have been 
precisely the same from whoever the offer had 
come. I love you too well to want to exchange 
you for anybody else. Beyond the worry of re- 
ceiving and reading a long letter from my aunt 
urging Lord Helsham’s cause, and having an in- 
terview with her when she of course, acted in a 
precisely similar way, I have had no bother or 
worry about the matter. And I think I have at 
last convinced Aunt Letty that it is quite useless 
to attempt to turn me from my purpose, which 
is to marry my Philip at the time we have 
arranged, and to let no one come between us. 

“I have bothered you about this because I think 
we ought to have no secrets from each other, and 
that you are entitled to know what has occurred. 
But please understand, Philip, that I have no wish 
to claim any credit for having acted in the only 
possible way in which a decent woman could have 
acted, and in the way towards which my affection 
and inclination pointed. Do come up to town 
again as soon as you can. I hate to be separated 
from you. 

Papa sends his kindest remembrances, and with 
love to your mother. 

Believe me, ever your own 


“ Florence.” 


214 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


From Philip Ainslie to Florence Keane : — 

“My Darling, 

“Tliank you for your sweet letter. You 
acted just as I should have supposed that you 
would have done. I know that I am quite 
unworthy of affection such as yours, and I can 
only marvel at my good fortune at having won 
it. 

“You see I was quite right about your aunt. 
If she could have stopped our marriage she would 
have done so. But I must try and not be angry 
with her, for after all I can easily understand her 
thinking that such a treasure as my Florence is 
far too valuable to be given into the charge of 
such a person as I. 

“ I am counting the days that must elapse before 
our wedding, and, like a schoolboy thinking of his 
holidays, am longing for the time to pass quickly. 
You may expect me in town again towards the 
end of next week. 

“Please give my kindest regards to your father, 
and with all my love, 

“ Believe me, your devoted and attached 

“ Philip.” 


From Miss Firbank to Lord Helsham 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 215 


'‘Dear Lord Helsham, 

"I have just received your note. To say that 
I am flattered by the confidence you have thought 
well to repose in me, would be but faintly to 
convey my appreciation of the honour you have 
done me. Suffice it to say that your confidence 
has not been misplaced. 

“My own strong impression is that my niece 
has no real attachment for Mr. Ainslie. I believe 
that it is a mere passing fancy that will soon wear 
off, to be succeeded, I hope and pray, by a solid 
affection for yourself, a feeling that you are so well 
able to inspire — I had almost said command — by 
your personal qualities alone, to say nothing of 
your rank and position. 

“ Believe me, dear Lord Helsham, that all will 
yet come well. That is to say, if you will con- 
tinue to exhibit that kindly patience which, par 
parenthese, my niece has no right to expect, and 
I am bound to add, does not deserve. But I 
know Florence’s disposition thoroughly — have I not 
brought her up from a mere child ? — and I don’t 
in the least despair of making her see matters in 
the right light. 

“Take my advice, and let things remain as they 
are for a little longer. Don’t call at Grosvenor 
Square, and in fact . avoid Florence in every pos- 
sible way. I will keep you au courant with 


2i6 young MR, AINSLIE^S COURISHIP. 


everything, and I think you may rely on hearing 
from me definitely in a very short space of 
time. 

“With kindest regards, 

•Believe me, dear Lord Helsham, 

•Ever sincerely yours, 

•Letitia Firbaxe.** 


CHAPTER XXV, 



DAY or two later the most terrible accident 


that could well he conceived befell the 
unfortunate Philip. 

There had been a pigeon-match in the immediate 
neighbourhood, and in which he had only too gladly 
taken part. 

“I wish you would not shoot with that gun,” his 
mother had said to him as he was starting in the 
morning. “You recollect my dream, and how 
friglitened I was at the time. Anyone will lend 
you his gun. Pray leave your own at home.” 

But Philip had only laughed, and told his mother 
not to be foolishly superstitious. 

“ We shall have you setting up for a fortune- 
teller next, mother. And if you were not sent to 
goal, you would do a pretty brisk trade in these 
parts. I’ll be bound. But you won’t have me for 
one of your customers. Good-bye, you dear old 
sweet.” And the young man had gone off. 

Philip had shot as straight as ever, and the gun 
as hard, and for the principal event of the day— 


2i8 young MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


a subscription cup — bad tied with Captain St. 
Leger, a crack shot^ staying with the Endesleighs. 
They had killed six birds each, when the captain, 
who shot first, did not manage to stop his seventh. 
Then came Philip’s turn. 

‘"Are you ready?” he cried, repeating the usual 
formula. 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Pull.” 

Down fell the left-hand trap. Up got the blue 
rock, tailless and swift of wing. Down fell the 
hammer on the cartridge ; then came an explosion, 
and with a cry Philip let the stock of his breech- 
loader fall at his feet. The barrel had burst. His 
left hand was badly injured, and he was blind 
for life. 

They took him home, after somebody had gone 
on first to break the news as gently as possible 
to his mother; and shortly afterwards the surgeon 
arrived. 

Mr. Bockett shook his head. He was an old 
friend of Philip’s, and was much affected, and 
showed as much feeling as surgeons ever do show 
under such circumstances. Too much demonstra- 
tiveness would unquestionably interfere with their 
work, and it is perhaps well for their patients that 
they are happily innocent of anything of the kind. 

“Bockett,” said Philip, as that skilful practi- 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S C 0 UR 2 SHIP. 219 


tioner was bandaging the injured hand after having 
attended to the eyes and face, "it is all up, isn’t 
it?” 

" What do you mean, old fellow ? ** 

"I shall never see again.” 

" I have known you for twenty years, and there- 
fore can judge whether it is best and wisest to tell 
you the truth. I think it is, and shall not hesitate. 
No, your sight is gone. For the rest, you will 
soon recover. But no oculist in Europe can give 
you a fresh pair of eyes.” 

Philip gave a bitter cry. " My God I my God ! ” 
he said. " I can never bear it I ” 

"Oh yes, you can,” said Mr. Bockett, of course 
meaning well, but buoyed up with the fortitude 
with which we can usually contemplate the misfor- 
tunes of others. " Oh yes, you can. You must be 
plucky and cheer up. You’re not the first that 
has lost his sight and has lived a happy and useful 
life afterwards. Why, it’s quite a common thing,” 
added the doctor, boldly. ‘‘lion’t think, old fellow, 
that I do not sympathize with you,” he continued, 
kindly. “ I do sympathize with you, with all 
my heart. I shall be here early in the morning 
to see how you are getting on. I wish it had 
happened to anyone else in the parish instead 
of young Ainslie,” he said to himself as he drove 
away. 


220 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 


The unhappy mother had waited for him at the 
foot of the stairs, and had clung to him and im- 
plored him to save her son’s eyesight. He had, 
as in her son’s case, thought it best to tell the 
truth, and had done so, entreating her to be calm 
for the sake of Philip, and comforting her as best 
he could. At last he had left, and then the poor 
lady had gone to her boy, and had done all that 
kindliness and thought could do to alleviate his 
suffering. 

“Mother,” said Philip, “let Florence know what 
has happened. I am sure she will come down 
here at once, and you will find her a great com- 
fort and help. I think you had better telegraph 
for her.” 

Mrs. Ainslie did as her son bade her, and by the 
earliest possible train next morning Florence arrived. 

“ My dearest Mrs. Ainslie, what is the truth 
about Philip ? Let me know the worst. I have 
come here as quickly as I could. There was no 
train I could catch ^ter I got your telegram last 
night. I have never closed my eyes, and I came 
off by the first train this morning. What has 
happened ? Tell me at once.” 

“My poor child, it is sad indeed to meet you 
for the first time under such circumstances. But, 
cruel as the truth is, I will not keep you in 
suspense. Philip has lost his eyesight.” 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 221 


" Lost his eyesight I ” cried Florence. “ Not for 
ever ? ” 

“Yes, for ever. The doctor says that the sight 
can never return. The eyes are irretrievably in- 
jured. Philip was at a pigeon-match yesterday, and 
his gun burst, and his hand is injured and his 
eyesight gone.” 

“ How awful I ” said Florence. “ 01 course you 
will let me stop and nurse him. Would you let 
somebody send off a telegram to papa ? ” This 
she hurriedly wrote. “ And now may I see him ? ” 

“Yes, dear, but you must be faint after your 
journey. What can I get you ? ” 

“ Nothing, thanks. I could not touch a thing 
at present, Mrs. Ainslie, Let me see him — that 
is all I want.” 

Mrs. Ainslie led the way to the room where her 
son was lying. “ I have brought someone to com- 
fort you, Philip darling,” said his mother. 

“It is Florence,” answered Philip, simply. 

“Yes, dear, it is,” and the old lady withdrew. 

“ My darling, how good of you to come so quickly ! ” 

“As if I could stop away a moment, knowing 
what had happened to you ? I am come to nurse 
you.” 

“You know my eyes are gone for ever?” 

“Perhaps, darling, there may be a little hope.” 

“Not the slightest — I never shall see a glimmer 


222 


YOUNG MR. AINSLINS COURTSHIP. 


of light again. Never see the hills and the fields 
and the river and the sea; never see the country 
I have loved so well, never again see the face of 
her T worship ! ” 

“ My poor love 1 ” answered Florence, deeply 
moved, “ I will be your eyes, and through me, your 
faithful and loving companion, you shall see every- 
thing. I will do all that a woman can do to make 
up for your loss. It will be my pride and my joy 
to make you feel your affliction as lightly as 
possible, to make you suffer less.’* 

Philip shook his head slowly and sadly. “My 
future looks as black,” said he, “as the perpetual 
darkness to which I am doomed. Still, my only 
ray of light is in you; and your kindness and 
your love do comfort me in a sense.” 

“That is right, Philip. You will be brave for 
my sake, and we shall get through even worse 
misfortunes than this. Not,” she added, “that I 
underrate the terrible trouble that has come upon 
you. But I will help you to meet it half-way, help 
you to face it boldly, and finally to overcome 
it.” 

“I shall never overcome it,” answered Philip, “it 
is stronger than I. But I will not give way to 
hopeless despair, as I should have done if I had 
not had you. And then, too, there is my mother, — 
I must not forget her. Suffering like mine makes 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 223 


one very selfish, I am afraid. I owe a duty to 
her which I will try to perform in spite of this 
calamity.” 

Of course you will, dear. And now you mustn’t 
talk any more, unless it is to ask me for anything 
you want. But you must lie still with your hand 
in mine, and try and get some sleep.” 

“Night and day are all the same to me now,” 
groaned Philip. And with a deep sigh he turned 
wearily towards the wall and spoke no more. 


CHAPTER XXYI. 


0 sick man ever had a more devoted nurse 



than Florence Keane. Upon her fell the 
bulk of the trying duties. It is needless to say 
that poor Mrs. Ainslie did everything in her 
power, but the awful shock had told terribly on 
the unhappy lady, and her natural grief had so 
mastered her that she could render but slight help 
in the arduous task of nursing her son. 

Philip, though entirely mindful of Florence’s 
devotion, was nevertheless somewhat fretful. This 
was a state of things more than pardonable, 
and one quite to be anticipated from a person of 
Philip’s active disposition. But it somehow jarred 
on Florence, and it set her thinking, and thinking* 
too, in a direction not very favourable towards her 
lover. 

“Is it to be always like this with me?” she 
thought. “Am I to devote the remainder of my 
days to tending a helpless man, who really does 
not seem to appreciate my self-sacrifice? And a 
marriage with a man afflicted as is Philip will 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 225 


necessarily entail self-sacrifice of the most absolute 
kind.” 

But she kept her reflections to herself, and 
Philip had not the least idea of the direction in 
which her thoughts were straying. Meantime^ 
seemed daily to grow more irritable and fretful, 
and Florence, truth to tell, began to get a little 
weary of her task. 

A fortnight passed in this way. Then a telegram 
arrived from Mr. Keane. 

“ I am very ill, and cannot leave my bed. The 
doctors say I am threatened with paralj'sis. If 
possible, come immediately.” Florence showed the 
telegram to Mrs. Ainslie. 

‘‘I must go up to town at once to see papa,” 
she said. “I am much alarmed about him; and 
Philip is getting on so well that I am sure he can 
spare me for a few days.” 

^‘Of course you must go, my dear child. I will 
take care of my poor boy while you are away. 
I am gradually recovering from the shock, and 
each day shall be able to be of more use. And 
then again, Philip is getting much better. Your 
dear father is alone, and your manifest duty is 
to be with him — there can be no question about 
that. Of course you must go.” Thus Mrs. Ainslie. 

Philip, when he heard the news, entirely agreed 
with his mothers view. And so it was settled, 

15 


226 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE* S COURTSHIP. 


and the lovers parted. They parted with every 
demonstration of affection, and with a promise on 
Florence’s part of a speedy return. 

“You won’t desert me, my darling?” said Philip. 

“Don’t dream of anything of the kind. Of 
course I won’t. I shall be back again directly I 
am satisfied about papa. You say yourself that 
you think I ought to lose no time in going to 
him.” 

“Most certainly not,” replied Philip. “I am not 
so contemptibly selfish as to wish to keep you 
under such circumstances. And your father has 
behaved as a father to me; and possessing the 
sincere regard for him that I do, I am nearly as 
anxious as yourself” 

When Florence reached Grosvenor Square, she 
found Mr. Keane much worse than she anticipated. 
Two physicians were in attendance; and the family 
doctor, a kindly old gentleman who had known 
her all her life, gave her but scanty hopes of her 
father’s recovery. 

“No one can tell, my dear young lady, what 
may be the result of this seizure. No one can 
tell. The whole of the College of Physicians could 
not, if it tried. But I fear the probabilities are 
against us. True your papa has a wonderful 
constitution — a truly marvellous constitution, I may 
say. But the seizure was a very sharp and senous 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 227 


one, and how things may turn out we cannot 
divine. We can only hope for the best, and leave 
nature to do her work, assisting her as best we 
may. Sir William Wenham is entirely of my 
opinion. I thought it better to call him in at 
once, and there is no one in the profession who 
is better able to grapple with this insidious 
malady.”. 

“Thank you a thousand times. Dr. Grey. It 
is a great comfort to me that papa is in such 
hands. Heaven knows that I have enough trouble 
to bear just at present.” 

** Poor child, I have heard your sad news. There 
is no hope, is there, of the recovery of Mr. Ainslie’s 
sight ? ” 

“ Absolutely none,” answered Florence. “ The 
sight is entirely destroyed.” 

“ Well,” said the doctor, trying to comfort her, 
there are worse misfortunes than the loss of 
eyesight. The blind are always patient, and the 
way they quickly adapt themselves to their sur- 
roundings is simply marvellous. Look at Mr. 
Fawcett, for instance. He lost his sight in almost 
a similar way to Mr. Ainslie; but he determined, 
with his extraordinary force of character, that his 
affliction should not prevent his carrying out the 
duties and pleasures of ordinary life. What was 
the result? He rowed, he skated, he fished, he 


228 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


took horse exercise, just like any other man ; and 
he became a Cabinet Minister, filling a position 
requiring the most perfect and accurate knowledge 
of detail, and filled it with a success that no man 
has achieved since the office was created. And I 
have little doubt that Mr. Ainslie will exhibit a 
similar fortitude in face of this cruel calamity.’’ 

“He is a brave man,” said Florence, “and I 
think he will. But it does not make the matter 
any the less hard.” 

“That is true,” answered Dr. Grey, “and you 
both have my sincerest sympathies.” 

The serious nature of Mr. Keane’s malady necessi- 
tated Florence’s remaining in London. And I am 
sorry to have to make the confession that in her 
case absence did not make the heart grow fonder. 
Of course she sympathized with her lover’s 
misfortune; of course she wrote him letters every 
day, breathing sentiments of affection and regard, 
but all the same she had begun to ask herself very 
seriously whether she would be wise in keeping to 
her engagement. 

“It would seem very heartless to abandon poor 
Philip now,” she said to herself. “But after all, 
perhaps it would be the kindest thing to do. I 
am in no way fitted to be the lifelong nurse of an 
invalid, and I feel that my very nature would 
rebel at the task. Then at last I should probably 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 229 


abandon it. It would be better in every way to 
do so in the present than in the future. My late 
experience has taught me that I should find it 
hard to bear the friction that living with Philip 
must cause. Still, I cannot find it in my heart to 
throw him over. I really don’t know how to act 
for the best. There is no one to advise me. Papa 
is a great deal too ill for me to worry him about 
the matter at all, and in Aunt Letty I have not 
much confidence. I can’t forget the way she tried 
to turn me from Philip when there was not the 
slightest reason against our marriage. No, I must 
weigh everything thoroughly, and then act on my 
own judgment, for both our sakes.” 

Meantime, Miss Firbank had been considering 
what line she should adopt under all the circum- 
stances. To say that she was pleased at the news 
of Philip’s accident would be to do her a great 
injustice. On the contrary, she was much shocked. 
But after the first feeling of sorrow had passed 
away, there came the comforting reflection that 
what had happened was perhaps for the best, as 
it w"ould in all probability necessitate the breaking 
off the engagement between Florence and Mr. 
Ainslie, and would leave the ground open to Lord 
Helsham. 

“Mr. Ainslie could not possibly be so wickedly 
selfish as to wish to hold Florence to her promise,** 


230 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE' S COURTSHIP, 


thought Miss Firbank. “No, he will of course 
release her. But how if she declines to be 
released? She is quite mad and foolish enough 
for that. I should not be the least surprised if 
she were to insist upon carrying out the engage- 
ment. My course, however, is clear,” argued the 
Tusee old spinster. “ If I urge her in one direction 
she is bound to go in the other. I shall certainly 
not discourage her from keeping her engagement, 
even if I do not go so far as to actually advocate 
her doing so.” 

Miss Firbank was at this period entirely in the 
dark as to her niece’s sentiments, and consequently 
did not know how very little was required to 
induce her to break off the marriage. She had 
twice called to see Florence, but on the first 
occasion Miss Keane was out, and on the second 
was resting after having sat up with her father 
the greater part of the previous night. Then she 
decided to write. 


CHAPTER XXVIL 
J^EAREST FLORENCE, — 

**1 was completely overwhelmed with 
the dreadful news about poor Mr. Ainslie. I have 
twice been to see you, but in vain. Pray send 
over to me to say when I can find you, and 

I will come at any tiwe. I was not, as you 
remember, an advocate of your marriage with the 
unhappy young gentleman before this sad event 
occurred; I opposed your engagement as vigorously 
as I could; but of course matters are altered now, 
and you will never hear me breathe another word 
against the choice you have made under happier 
circumstances. 

“ It must be a great comfort for you, my 

poor child, to reflect upon the immense help you 
will be able to render your suffering husband, 

and he, too, will doubtless appreciate his good 

fortune in having secured the services of a loving 
nurse. 

“The whole matter is so inexpressibly sad that 


232 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


I cannot trust myself to write more, and with 
deepest sympathy, 

** Believe me, 

" Ever affectionately yours, 

“Letitia Fiebank. 

"P.S. — I trust your father continues better. I 
met Dr. Grey on my way to you to-day. He said 
that Sir William and he were much more satisfied, 
and he seemed quite hopeful as to the result. 
My poor Florence, you have indeed had a time 
of trial. Pray recollect that if I can be of any 
possible service you have only to command me. 
Good-bye, and God bless you, my dearest child.” 

*A very kind letter indeed,” thought Florence. 
“ Dear Aunt Letty I I should never have given 
her credit for so much goodness of heart. Evidently 
she thinks it is my duty to keep to my engage- 
ment. After all, I suppose I ought to do so, but I 
will talk it over with my aunt, and come to some 
final decision. I think I am the most miserable 
girl in the world.” 

Then she wrote:— 

"Dear Aunt Letty, — 

‘‘Thank you sincerely for your kind note. 
Will you come over to me as soon as you can ? I 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 233 


am not going out at all, so you are sure to find me. 

“ Yours most afiectionately, 

“ Florence.” 

Within half-an-hour of receiving Florence’s letter 
Miss Firbank was at Grosvenor Square. 

“ My sweetest child ! ” said the old lady, em- 
bracing her niece, “ believe me how much I sympa- 
thise with you.” 

“I am sure of it, Aunt Letty. It has been a 
crushing blow to me.” 

“There is no hope for him, I fear — no chance of 
his recovering his sight ? ” 

“Not the slightest. It is gone for ever.” 

“ How terribly sad I I can scarcely realise it. 
Poor fellow I Well, he will have you to comfort 
him.” 

“That’s just where it is. Aunt Letty. I don’t 
know what to do, I don’t indeed. I love Philip, 
as you know, and would have married him with- 
out a farthing. I would have roughed it with 
him if it bad been necessary, and had we both 
been poor would have faced the world with him 
with the utmost confidence, and would never have 
complained whatever had been our lot. But now 
all is changed, and I don’t feel at all sure of 
myself.” 

“I don’t quite understand you, dear.” 


234 YOUNG MR. A INS LIE'S COURTSHIP. 


“ What I mean, Aunt Letty, is this — don’t think 
me cruel and heartless ” 

"I should never think you that, dear Florence.” 

“ Well, I cannot help feeling that I am quite 
unfitted to perform the duties that will now de- 
volve upon me, if this engagement is to go on.” 

“You mean that you would not have the patience 
to nurse and tend your husband?” 

“Yes, that is just what I do mean. My feelings 
towards Philip are unchanged, but I honestly con- 
sider that I am unequal to the task this awful 
calamity has imposed upon me.” 

“ You are sure of this, my dear child ? ” 

“Yes, I think I am quite sure. And the know- 
ledge of my weakness, or my selfishness, if you 
prefer to call it that, makes me very wretched 
and unhappy. I am contemptible in my own eyes, 
and I feel that I must be in yours. Aunt Letty.” 

“Nothing of the kind, Florence. On the con- 
trary, I think you are exhibiting a wisdom and a 
discretion that no one would have expected from 
you. You are showing a discrimination rare indeed 
amongst young women of the present day.” 

“You think I am right. Aunt Letty?” 

“I do, most unquestionably. You will do me 
the justice to admit that, from the moment I heard 
of Mr. Ainslie s accident, I never advanced a single 
argument, never said a single word, against the 


YOUNG MR. AINSLTNS COURTSHIP. 235 


match. Oq the contrary, I treated it as a fait 
accompli. But when I listen to your view of the 
situation, candour compels me to admit that I con- 
sider you are perfectly right, and, in fact, that I 
agree with every word you say.” 

And you advise me to break off the marriage ? ” 
"I shall not advise you further one way or the 
other. But I can see that you are at last bent on 
acting sensibly and prudently, and I will content 
myself with saying that if your conduct is guided 
by your present frame of mind it will have my 
entire approval.” 

“ Well, that is the same thing. Aunt Letty.” 

“ I daresay it is, dear. Anyhow, it’s what I 
mean. However, it is no good talking any more 
about it. Act in the matter as you think best, 
and in the way most calculated to promote your 
future happiness. Recollect that, if you don’t con- 
sult your own happiness, you will not consult that 
of Mr. Ainslie. If you make your life miserable 
by marrying him, you will not make his happy. 
I am not a married woman myself, but my know- 
ledere of the world tells me that there must be 
reciprocity in these matters. Now tell me about 
your father. How is he ? ” 

" Very much better and stronger, I am glad to say.” 
“ That is good news. Now mind you don’t worry 
him about this, or he will very likely have a relapse.” 


236 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 


“ I don’t mean to, Aunt Letty.” 

" That is right. Act for yourself and act 
promptly — that is, if you decide to act at all. 
And now good-bye.” 

“Good-bye, Aunt Letty, and thank you very much.” 

We are never so grateful for advice, and never 
so ready to follow it, as when it chimes in with 
our own convictions. Florence had now made up 
her mind to terminate the engagement with Philip, 
but, badly as she was behaving, she had no inten- 
tion of playing cat and mouse with his affections; 
so that night she wrote him the following letter 

“ Dear Philip, — 

“You will always bo very dear to me, al- 
though, owing to what I am now compelled to 
write to you, I fear that I shall no longer possess 
the smallest corner in your heart. 

“I have got something very painful and un- 
pleasant to tell you, and I had better do so at once 
without any useless preface. It is that our marriage 
can never take place. Honest truth compels me 
to tell you that I find my nerves so shattered by 
the events of the last few days that I am abso- 
lutely conscious of my inability to carry out my 
engagement. Were I to attempt to do so, it would 
be you that would suffer most in the end. So I 
will not be so criminally weak as to attempt to 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 237 


face a future that I am perfectly incapable of meet- 
ing, and drag you down with myself into a gulf 
of unhappiness. 

"Believe me that it is best for us to part. But 
though we can never be united, we can be — if 
you will allow it — firm friends, and you will always 
find in me the sincere affection of a loving sister. 

" I will say no more now but that I shall 
always remain, 

" Your most attached and devoted friend, 

" Florence Keane.” 

Then she wrote to Miss Firbank: — 

^‘Dear Actnt Letty, — 

" I have well considered everything, and 
have made up my mind. The result is that I 
have written to Philip to tell him that our marriage 
is impossible. Whether I have done rightly I 
cannot say. But at all events my conduct, if not 
noble and generous, has at least been honest. 

" Ever affectionately yours, 

" Florence.” 

The receipt of this letter did not distress Miss Fir- 
bank in any appreciable manner, and after reading it 
a second time she despatched a note to Lord Helshain, 
which for the sake of better security she sent by hand. 


Chapter XXVIII. 


HATEVER might have been the purport of 



Miss Firbank’s letter to Lord Helsham, it 


had, at all events, the effect of bringing that esti- 
mable young nobleman round to Grosvenor Square. 
For on the following afternoon he called upon the 
Keanes and found Florence alone. 

“We have not seen you for some time. Lord 
Helsham.” 

“ Yes, it does seem a long time — to me, at any 
rate. But in the first place I have been a good 
deal out of town, and in the second I had heard 
of your father’s illness, and I felt sure that you did 
not want to be bothered with visitors. How is 
Mr. Keane?’* 

“Very much better indeed, thanks. I was very 
frightened about him at first, but now there is really 
no cause for anxiety. The doctor told me to-day 
that his recovery was assured.” 

“That is good news. Miss Keane; and it is all 
the more welcome to me because in a measure it 
leaves me free to say to you what has been in my 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 239 


mind and on the tip of my tongue for a very long 
time. I am not good at beating about the bush, 
and so I will come to the point at once. I am 
very fond of you — I love you with all my heart, 
and I want you to marry me.” 

“I am afraid that is impossible, Lord Helsham.” 

"Impossible! Why? There is no impossibility 
about it if you will only consent. And I do beg 
of you to do that. You don’t know what a good 
husband I should make you. I am sure I am an 
easy sort of fellow to get on with — everybody tells 
me that. I know I have always appeared at a 
disadvantage in your society, but that is always 
the case — at least with the great majority of men 
— when they are honestly in love, and as much in 
earnest as I am.” 

" I quite believe what you tell me. Lord Helsham. 
In return I will be equally frank with you. I have 
been for some time past engaged to Mr. Ainslie, 
whom perhaps you may remember having met here. 
He has had an accident that has rendered him 
blind for life, and our marriage has been broken off 
— broken off by myself, I should add. The truth is 
that I did not feel capable of doing my duty to him 
under the altered circumstances, and after consulting 
my aunt upon the subject I resolved to act as I 
have done. Probably my conduct will not commend 
itself to the world; probably it will not commend 


240 YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


itself to you, Lord Helsham. Anyhow, I did not 
feel myself capable of making the sacrifice that a 
marriage with Mr. Ainslie entailed, and so, as I have 
told you, all is over between us.” 

quite appreciate all you tell me, Miss Keane, 
but why, may I ask, should it render our marriage 
impossible ? On the contrary, why not let me hope 
that now you are free there is some chance for me ? 
I won’t bother you any more to-day, but do tell me 
that there is some slight hope for me.” 

“ Then again, Lord Helsham, I do not care for 
you, at least not as a woman should for the man 
she is going to marry.” 

“ I don’t care a straw about that,” said the young 
man. " If I have the opportunity, I will make you 
care for me in time. Affection such as mine is 
sure to meet with a return one day, and I will be 
content to wait until I can gain yours. If you will 
only marry me I will be content with everything 
else.” 

“ But don’t you despise me after what I have told 
you ? ” 

‘‘Not a bit.” 

“Do you mean to say that you don’t consider I 
have behaved very badly to Mr. Ainslie ? ” 

“I am very sorry for Mr. Ainslie, but his affairs 
have nothing to do with me. If you didn’t marry 
me you would not be his wife, so I am doing him 


YOUNG MR. AINSLINS COURTSHIP. 241 


no possible wrong. As to your behaviour towards 
him, I think that if your feelings were changed, 
and that you felt you could not do your duty 
to him, you have acted very properly and very 
honestly in telling him so. But all this is nothing 
to me. I love you, my darling, and that is all I 
care about. Will you marry me ? ” 

“Well, Lord Helsham, if you care to take me, 
knowing all you do, I will say yes.” 

* * * « • 

That night Florence told her father all that had 
happened during the last two or three days. 

“ You know best, I suppose, my dear child,” 
said the old banker, “ what is mo5>t likely to ensure 
your happiness, and your happiness is all I care 
for in this world. But I doubt whether you have 
acted wisely, and I doubt whether you would have 
acted as you have done if your aunt had let you 
alone. I would far sooner have seen you married 
to poor Philip without his eyes than to young 
Helsham if he had eyes at the back of his head 
as well as in front. But it is for you to say — 
it is for you to say.” 

“I have thought well over it, papa, and I am 
sure I have acted for the best. It is not Aunt 
Letty’s doing in the least.” 

“ Perhaps not,” said Mr. Keane, still uncon- 
vinced, “perhaps not. But somehow I think that 

16 


242 YOUNG MR AINSLIE' S COURTSHIP. 


one day you will regret the course you have taken. 
God grant that I may be wrong I ” 

“ I hope you may, darling papa. But of one 
thing you may be sure, and that is that I will 
never give up my own dear, sweet papa, and that 
I will take care of him and pet him as long as 
I live." 

And the girl put her arms round the old 
gentleman’s neck, and hugged, and kissed, and 
fondled him, with the effect that he soon forgot 
his objection to his daughter’s conduct, and poor 
Philip’s only advocate was silenced with caresses. 

• • * • • 

'‘Here is a letter from Florence, my darling boy,” 
said Mrs. Ainslie, handing the fateful missive to 
her son. “ You open it, dearest, and your old 
mother will read it to you.” 

Philip tore open the envelope and handed the 
letter to the old lady. 

“Well, why don’t you go on?" he asked ner- 
vously, not understanding his mother’s hesitation. 

“ Merciful God ! " exclaimed Mrs. Ainslie, who 
had by this time possessed herself of its contents. 

“ What is the matter, mother ? ” cried Philip. 
*Is Florence ill? For Heaven’s sake tell me. It 
is too cruel to keep me in suspense." 

“ My ^poor boy— my poor boy ! No, I will not 


YOUNG MR. AINSLINS COURTSHIP. 243 


keep you in suspense. Florence Keane is yours 
no longer. Don’t grieve for her, she is not worth 
it. Listen to what she says.” And Mrs. Ainslie 
read aloud to her son Florence’s letter IL .1 be- 
ginning to end. 

“She is a heartless girl, Philip, and you are 
well rid of her.” 

“Don’t say that, mother. I dare say she is quite 
right.” 

“Eight,” cried the old lady, “to treat you like 
this! I call it diabolical. She is no woman at 
all, and deserves the punishment that I hope one 
day she will have.” 

“Don’t talk like that. You only distress me, 
mother,” answered Philip. “ And now leave me, I 
should like to be alone. I want to think things 
over.” 

Mrs. Ainslie went away, cursing Florence Keane 
from her inmost soul for her heartlessness, and 
vowing to do all in her power for her unhappy 
son to make up for the faithlessness of his betrothed. 

Philip, for his part, sat in his chair all day, 
scarcely speaking a word, and apparently rapt in 
thought. Night came, and he asked his mother 
to assist him to his room. This she did, and he 
bade her an affectionate good-night. 

“I shall be better in the morning, mother mine. 
Don’t grieve for me. It has been a hard blow for 


244 young MR, AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 


me, but one is not always bound to suffer through 
the long years.” 

“ I should think not,” said Mrs. Ainslie, em- 
bracing her son. Can I do nothing for you, 
darling? Well then, good-night, and God bless 
you.” 

"God bless you, mother — God bless you. Good- 
night.” 


CHAPTER XXIX. 



HE sound of Mrs. Ainslie’s retreating foot- 


steps had scarcely died away when Philip 
staggered to his feet and groped his way in the 
direction of the chest of drawers. He put his 

hand into the right top corner drawer and 

speedily drew out his revolver. Having satisfied 
himself that the weapon was loaded, and still 
retaining it in his hand, he made towards the 
table, felt for a chair, and sat down. “There is 
little now,” he thought, “that remains to be done. 
I will write to my mother and to Florence, and 
then make an end of it. I am glad that all 

worries will soon be over. There is nothing worth 

living for now, and I am not afraid to die.” 

Then he found his desk, and taking out some 
paper and a pen wrote as follows 

“Darling Mother, — 

“I feel I am doing a cowardly thing in thus 
leaving you, but I have been unable to resist the 
impulse that urges me to end my present suSering. 


246 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


“Believe me, darling mother, I am not ungrateful 
for all the love you have from the first lavished 
upon me. No son ever had a more devoted mother, 
and no son ever loved his mother more truly than 
I love you. 

“It is hard to part, but it is ^harder for me to 
live on here, a useless creature, tortured in mind 
and maimed in body. And though I know I ought 
to try and bear my trials, yet I feel they are too 
much for me, and I cannot support their weight. 

“God bless you, my own sweet mother. I feel 
that I shall be pardoned for this act, and that 
before very long we shall meet again. 

“ Good-bye. 

" Your loving son, 

“ Philip.” 

“ Poor darling ! ” he said ; “ may God in His 
mercy soften this blow. I wish I had been made 
of stouter stuff, and had been able to face the 
dismal future in store for me were I to remain 
here. But I am as I am. I am as I have been 
created, and my fate is beyond my control” 

Then he wrote to Florence Keane. 

“Dear Miss Keane, — 

“I cannot refrain from sending you a few 
lines to say good-bye. They will necessarily be 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 247 


brief, for it is a great strain for one in my condi- 
tion to write. Blindfold yourself and try, and you 
will see what I mean. 

" But I must write to you — at least now or never 
— for I am going a long journey and shall not 
return. And I want to tell you that whatever 
bitterness I might have felt at first at your break- 
ing our engagement ofi* has all passed away. Reflec- 
tion has taught me that you were quite right, and 
that it would have been selfish and indeed ridiculous 
on my part to expect anything else. Why should 
you waste your young life in acting as a blind 
man’s dog? It was not to be thought of for a 
moment, and I have no right to complain. 

“Still, although it is but right that I should lose 
you, it is none the less hard to bear. So hard 
indeed do I find it that I am running away from 
the suffering that it entails — Heaven knows where 
— and, as I say, never to return. You see I have 
two calamities to face. One of these I might have 
fought against, but I feel powerless against both. 
Think of me sometimes, and as kindly as you can. 
My thoughts of you, if regretful, are in no way 
tinged with resentment, and I thank you sincerely 
for the happy days I have spent in your society. 

“If you can in any way help to comfort my 
mother when I have gone away, I am sure that 
you will. She has had more than her share of 


248 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP. 


trials already in this life, and I fear that she will 
miss me very sadly. Don’t therefore forget her, and 
if, where I am going, I could know of any kindness 
on your part to her, believe me that I should be 
very grateful. 

“ And now, good-bye. Remember me to your 
father, and let me thank him through you for the 
last time for the generous way in which he treated 
me in relation to the most important matter of my 
life. 

“Good-bye, once more. And under all the cir- 
cumstances I somehow feel that you will not think 
it presumptuous on my part if I sign myself now, 
and for the last time, 

‘‘Yours till death, 

“Philip Ainslie.** 

“Well, that is finished at last,” said Philip. 

“ Thank heaven I have now done with the world, 
that world which has been so hard to me, and 
which, save for my mother’s sake, I now leave 
without the slightest shadow of regret.” 

O O 

He pushed the letters towards the centre of the 
table, and then felt for, and, having found, grasped 
his revolver. Then he fell on his knees and prayed 
fervently. 

“Dear Lord, pity me,” he said, “Christ, forgive 
pie and receive me. Thou knowest what it is to 


YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP. 249 


suffer here, and Thou wilt not deal with me too 
hardly because I had not Thy fortitude. From the 
time I was a little boy and used to hear and read 
the story of Thy cruel death, I have always hoped 
against hope that Thy bloodthirsty accusers would 
relent, and that Thou wouldst be saved. I have 
sorrowed with Thee, my Redeemer. Have pity on 
me in the hour of my death.” 

All this time he held the revolver firmly in his 
right hand. His supplications ceased, and though 
he had been much moved and agitated in approach- 
ing the heavenly throne, he did not waver now. 
He forced the muzzle of his revolver into his mouth 
and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell harmlessly, 
there being no cartridge in the chamber. 

The shock of this failure made him pause, and 
for an instant he considered whether or not he 
should abandon his rash design — but it was only 
for an instant. 

God forgive me I ” he said, and again he pulled 
the trigger. Then the bullet crashed through his 
brain and he fell dead on his face. None heard 
the cruel sound, for Philip’s room was in a distant 
wing of the house, and apart from his mother and 
the servants. 

The night passed away, and with the dawn of 
day came the birds on the window-sill, the birds 
that he used tp feed — the chaffinches^ the tomtits, 


250 YOUNG MR. AINSLIE^S COURTSHIP, 


and the sparrows. All was still. At first they 
stayed outside. Then the little creatures became 
more courageous, and hopped into and about the 
room in quest of food, and finding none flew back 
into the garden. The birds he loved did not then 
recognise the loss that had fallen upon them as 
upon all with whom he had come in contact, who 
loved what was generous and kindly and true. 

And the ink had long been dry, and the clay had 
long been cold, ere the world knew the climax of 
the sorrow of that distressful heart. 

« • • • • 

Is there no justice — no poetic justice in this 
world ? Yes, even in this nineteenth century we 
see examples daily. 

Extract from a letter written by Thomas Straight- 
ways, late of St. Blaise College, Cambridge, to John 
Smith, late of the same college, 

“You recollect Philip Ainslie, one of the best 
fellows who was up at the ’Varsity with us, and his 
sad death just four years ago. What I am going 
to tell you, Jack, will I am sure interest you. I 
ran down to Brighton yesterday, and was walking 
along the Queen’s E-oad, when I came across Lord 
Helsham, looking as fresh as paint, and apparently 
as happy as a king, as he tooled his dandy buggy 
with the spanking black mare along the front. I 


YOUNG MR, AINSLIE'S COURTSHIP, 251 


noticed that he was wonderfully attentive to the 
pretty little woman in priceless furs who sat by his 
side. By the way, the little woman in question 
was not Lady Helsham. I fancied somehow that I 
had met her before, but I was unable to quite call 
her to mind at first. But when they passed again, 
and Helsham nodded, and the little woman bowed, 
I immediately recognised Mademoiselle Stephanie of 
the Eden Theatre. 

‘'Of course the whole thing came back to my 
mind. The Helshams were living apart; their mar- 
riage had not been a success ; they had quarrelled — 
and they had parted. 

I saw Lady Helsham at Monte Carlo rather 
more than a month ago. She looked pale and worn. 
The old banker, her father, now a confirmed invalid, 
leant on her arm. She played and won, but she 
never smiled. She has certainly gone off terribly 
during the last three or four years. 

"Somehow or other I began to think of Burger’s 
Lenore, and to wonder if the dead man haunts her 
— her betrothed, the man who died for love of her.” 


THE END, 







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